By Kwanwoo Jun
SK Hynix shares rallied to a new record high as investors continued to pile into shares of the South Korean memory supplier.
The company, which makes high-bandwidth memory products critical for artificial-intelligence applications, recently reported blowout first-quarter earnings, with net profit jumping fivefold.
SK Hynix, which is a key supply to AI chip giant Nvidia, expects chip demand to continue to outpace supply in coming years given AI companies' massive appetite for computing power.
The stock climbed as much as 13% in early trade on Monday, heading for a five-session winning streak and another record close. Shares have almost tripled this year.
SK Hynix led strong gains in local semiconductor stocks, sending the stock benchmark Kospi over 5% higher in early trade. The Korea Exchange briefly halted trading to help reduce market volatility.
The rally in local chip stocks mirrored gains among their U.S. peers, which have recently surged amid the continuing AI boom. A blistering chip-stock rally lifted U.S. stocks to fresh highs Friday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rising 1.7% to its 11th record close of 2026.
"Amid the rapid growth of AI inference, the global market is reassessing the value of memory semiconductors," Daishin Securities analyst Ryu Hyung-keun said Monday.
"This is not a one-off event, but the beginning of a new era," Ryu said. He raised his target price for SK Hynix's shares by 47% to 2,500,000 won, equivalent to $1,710. Shares recently traded 12% higher at 1,887,000.
The South Korean chip maker has been ramping up its investments at home and abroad, especially in the U.S., to meet rising demand for AI memory.
SK Hynix, the world's second largest memory chip manufacturer, could see prices of its DRAM and NAND--the two major memory-chip types--peak in 2027, Morningstar analyst Jing Jie Yu said in a recent note.
Morningstar expects the company's operating margin to widen to 75.7% in 2026 and 77.3% in 2027 from 48.6% in 2025. It forecasts SK Hynix will raise dividend payouts to 15,000 won a share in 2026 and 16,000 won in 2027 from 3,000 won in 2025.
Write to Kwanwoo Jun at kwanwoo.jun@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 11, 2026 00:09 ET (04:09 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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