Brokerages have once again raised their expectations for SK hynix (000660.KS). IBK Investment & Securities lifted its target price to 4 million won, and NH Investment & Securities followed with 4.1 million won.
IBK Investment & Securities raised its target price for SK hynix to 4 million won from 1.8 million won on Tuesday. It maintained a "buy" rating.
"We expect second-quarter revenue in 2026 to rise 50.2% from the first quarter to 78.968 trillion won, and operating profit to increase 62.3% from the first quarter to 61 trillion won," said Kim Woon-ho, an analyst at IBK Investment & Securities. "Quarterly earnings are expected to beat forecasts for an 11th straight quarter, from the fourth quarter of 2023, when high-bandwidth memory (HBM) took off in earnest, through the second quarter of this year."
He assessed that the market is still underestimating memory demand. "Agent AI models consume 10,000 times more tokens than generative AI," Kim said. "As the role of the central processing unit (CPU) grows in connection with agent AI, DRAM demand is increasing, and expanding demand for KV cache memory is leading to higher NAND demand."
He also explained the reason for the delay in raising the target, given that the stock had far exceeded the level after he lifted the target price from 1.1 million won to 1.8 million won in April.
"It was a period of grappling with the scale of expected profits and appropriate valuation," he said. "I confirmed the justification for the rapidly rising share price through a visit to COMPUTEX in early June."
He added, "The judgment is that it must move away from being perceived as a cyclical industry, and the scale of its profits must be sufficiently reflected in the share price. If it is recognized as a stable growth industry, a valuation upgrade is entirely possible."
The same day, NH Investment & Securities also raised its target price for SK hynix to 4.1 million won from 3.2 million won.
"We expect the recent upward trend in memory prices to continue positively into the second half," said Ryu Young-ho, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities, raising his operating profit forecasts for 2026 and 2027 to 289.4 trillion won and 470 trillion won, respectively.
He projected second-quarter revenue of 85.3 trillion won and operating profit of 66.2 trillion won, up 283.9% and 618.7% from a year earlier, respectively.
"SK hynix is currently trading at 6.0 times its 12-month forward price-to-earnings ratio (PER)," Ryu said. "This is lower than Micron (7.9 times) and SanDisk (12.6 times)."
However, SK hynix shares were weak early in the session that day. According to the Korea Exchange, the stock was trading at 2.344 million won as of 9:20 a.m., down 8.44% from the previous trading day. On June 26, it climbed to an intraday record high of 2.987 million won, briefly approaching the "3 million won" mark.
