SK hynix Bets on Record $28 Billion Buyback to Lift Shares

* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an AI-based personalized news recommendation and summarization service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six tailored news items by reader type.

1. SK hynix to Cancel 40 Trillion Won in Shares, Signals 100 Trillion Won in Returns

Key points: SK hynix will buy 24.07 million common shares on the open market over three months from the 20th through November 19 and cancel all of them. The amount equals 3.3% of its total 730,492,365 outstanding shares, the largest share cancellation by a listed company in South Korea. The company will also expand its funding for shareholder returns from within 50% of free cash flow (FCF) to more than 50%, pursuing total returns of over 100 trillion won, and plans to announce additional return measures worth more than 60 trillion won, including a special dividend, in October when it reports third-quarter earnings. The stock, which has fallen to 1.5 million won — about half the 2.919 million won recorded on June 22 — is expected to enter a rebound phase following the announcement.

2. A Crack in the Super Cycle or a Temporary Correction? Samsung and SK hynix Plunge

Key points: With the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) sliding 4.98%, memory chip stocks fell across the board, including Micron Technology down 7.02% and SK hynix's ADR down 9.20%. The direct trigger was the 30-year U.S. Treasury yield breaking above 5.33%, but doubts over whether Big Tech can sustain its AI investment have grown as Anthropic's annualized 2026 revenue of about $65 billion fell short of market expectations of $70 billion to $75 billion. China's ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is also emerging as a variable that could break the upward momentum in commodity DRAM prices, as it pursues plans to expand DRAM production capacity from about 300,000 wafers a month to as many as 600,000. Experts are divided over whether the plunge is a temporary correction or the opening shot of a crack in the super cycle.

3. Samsung Foundry Raises Order Prices by Up to 15%

Key points: Against the backdrop of saturation in TSMC's advanced processes, Samsung Electronics raised prices for new orders on its 4-nanometer SF4 process by 10% to 15% from the previous month for U.S. and Chinese customers, and also raised prices for 5-nanometer SF5 wafers and its 8-nanometer process by about 10% to 15% and 10%, respectively. In the first quarter of this year, Samsung's share of the global foundry market stood at around 7%, while TSMC's exceeded 70%; but order momentum is clearly reviving, with talks under way with Nvidia and Google following Broadcom, Tesla and Apple. The SF4 lines at Samsung's Pyeongtaek campus have maintained maximum utilization since late last year, and second-half foundry revenue is expected to rise by double digits from a year earlier. The business is drawing attention as a factor for reassessing Samsung's valuation, given that its foundry unit could turn profitable earlier than previously expected.

4. SK hynix's Hybrid Memory Cuts DRAM Use to One-Sixteenth

Key points: SK hynix has demonstrated "hybrid memory" (HyMCache), which uses high-capacity NAND flash-based SSDs as memory for AI. In the design, only the KV cache for immediate use is kept in DRAM while the rest is stored on SSDs; performance is about 30% lower than a 1TB distributed DRAM system, but DRAM usage is just one-sixteenth. With the same DRAM budget, data processing capacity reached up to three times that of existing models, and commercialization is expected as early as next year, timed to the launch of Nvidia's next-generation GPU, Rubin Ultra. Analysts say the value of SK hynix's NAND business will also be reassessed amid a reshaping of memory competitiveness that secures both cost and capacity.

5. Won-Dollar Rate Falls Below 1,400; "Mid-1,300s Possible"

Key points: The won-dollar exchange rate closed at 1,397.7 won in the Seoul foreign exchange market on the 19th, down 14.1 won from the previous session, moving below 1,400 for the first time in about 10 and a half months. Analysts say the rate fell even as the 30-year U.S. Treasury yield rose to 5.31%, its highest since 2007, because the market read the rising yield as a fiscal risk premium rather than an improvement in returns. Cho Yong-gu, a senior researcher at Shinyoung Securities, raised the possibility of a rebound to 1,400 won or the low 1,400s in late August to September after a short-term bottom forms, while some forecast the rate will stabilize in the high 1,300s by year-end. Because the durability of the won's strength depends on fundamentals such as semiconductor exports, analysts note the need to check the currency-related earnings impact on stocks with a high export share.

6. KOSPI First-Half Operating Profit Jumps 254%

Key points: The first-half operating profit of 634 companies with regular settlements on the main bourse came to 388.1532 trillion won, up 254.15% from a year earlier, while net profit jumped 333.30% to 386.674 trillion won. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix accounted for more than 60% of total KOSPI operating profit, but even excluding the two, the remaining listed firms saw operating profit rise 75.61%, showing that the earnings improvement spread broadly. Operating profit in the electrical and electronics sector surged 674.92%, and the securities industry grew 163.37%, the steepest growth among financial businesses. By contrast, six sectors including transport and warehousing (-17.71%) and entertainment and culture (-33.55%) saw operating profit decline, indicating growing differentiation between sectors.