SK Hynix Sets Historic $149 Nasdaq ADR Pricing: World's Largest Foreign IPO Since Alibaba
In an absolute blockbuster event for the global semiconductor sector, South Korea’s memory giant SK Hynix has finalized its public offering price on the Nasdaq at $149 per American Depositary Receipt (ADR). Strikingly, the deal was priced at a 2.9% to 3.1% premium relative to its domestic closing price in Seoul—a highly unusual feat for an equity offering of this magnitude, which typically requires a discount to attract buyers.
Raising a staggering $26.5 billion, this transaction officially dethrones Alibaba’s 2014 debut to become the largest-ever U.S. listing by a foreign corporation, and the second-largest stock sale in global history behind SpaceX. Institutional demand oversubscribed the book-building process by more than seven times, reflecting insatiable global hunger for the hardware backing the AI revolution. SK Hynix plans to immediately deploy the capital to build advanced chip packaging facilities and secure extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment to solidifying its lead in the High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) super-cycle.
