SK Hynix Stocks Plunge After Record Nasdaq Debut

SK Hynix shares plunged as much as 15% in Seoul trading on July 13, the company's worst single-day decline on record, just two trading days after a blockbuster Nasdaq ADR debut. The Wall Street listing had priced at $149 per ADR and jumped as much as 14% intraday on its July 11 debut before closing up nearly 13%, a listing reported as one of the largest US share sales by a non-US company.

The reversal reflects profit-taking and renewed doubt over SK Hynix's near-term HBM4 shipment ramp, after a Korean brokerage cut its Q2 profit estimate for the company below consensus, and comes as the same worries about semiconductor overcapacity are weighing on the broader memory sector . The selloff spread across US chipmakers as well: WDC fell more than 6% and MU declined over 5%, as investors reassessed whether the memory supercycle narrative had gotten ahead of near-term fundamentals. The rout also coincided with, though was largely separate from, a fresh escalation in US-Iran tensions that sent oil prices up more than 4% amid fears of a Strait of Hormuz closure, adding a layer of broader risk-off sentiment to the day's trading.

The gap between SK Hynix's roughly 13% Nasdaq gain and the subsequent Seoul rout also highlights a valuation disconnect between its Korean and US-listed shares, a friction point common to dual-listed structures, and one that could persist as investors and index providers adjust to pricing the same company across two exchanges. The catalyst to watch next is the pace of HBM4 shipment growth in SK Hynix's upcoming earnings report, since the sharp quarter-over-quarter increase investors had priced in does not appear to have materialized at the scale expected.

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