SK Hynix’s $26.5 Billion US ADR Sale Ranks as World’s Third-Largest Share Offering

SK Hynix’s American depositary receipt offering ahead of its US listing was valued at about $26.5 billion, making it the third-largest share offering ever in the global equity market.

SK Hynix set the offering price for its ADR listing at $149 a share ahead of its July 10 US debut. The deal is the largest equity offering ever by a foreign company listing on the US stock market. It surpassed the $25 billion record set by China’s Alibaba Group in 2014, marking the first time that record has been broken in 12 years. It is also the largest ADR offering on record.

The transaction is sizable even against the biggest US listings, including those by domestic companies. It ranks behind only Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX, which listed last month in an $85.7 billion deal. In the global equity offering market, it trails SpaceX and Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion sale in 2019. It is also the largest share offering ever by a global semiconductor company and the biggest stock sale on record by a Korean company.

The pricing was unusual as well. Large new share offerings are typically priced below the existing share price to absorb supply and draw investor demand. SK Hynix priced the deal at a 2.9% premium to the previous day’s closing price in Seoul. That means it achieved premium pricing — issuing new shares above the price of existing stock — in a standard book-built common share offering.

Institutional demand was strong. Bloomberg previously reported that orders in the bookbuilding process topped seven times the shares on offer.

The listing is being interpreted in the market as a sign of changing global investor views on SK Hynix. Investors are increasingly treating the company not simply as a memory-chip maker, but as a core player in the artificial intelligence infrastructure ecosystem.

Lee Song-ryul, Hankyung.com reporter, yisr0203@hankyung.com