SK hynix hits W2,000tr milestone, but Kospi ends lower - theinvestor.co.kr

SK Hynix briefly surpassed the 2,000 trillion won ($1.31 trillion) market capitalization milestone on Friday, becoming the second South Korean company after Samsung Electronics to achieve this feat. T... Read original →

SK hynix’s brief breach of the W2,000 trillion market cap underscores the Korean equity market’s dangerous overreliance on memory giants. Technologically, surging demand for HBM3E and AI-optimized DRAM is reshaping the back-end ecosystem, redirecting advanced packaging capacity—like CoWoS—toward Korea and pressuring Taiwanese OSATs’ pricing power. On compliance, escalating U.S. export controls force SK hynix to absorb higher operational costs and supply-chain volatility, especially at its Xi’an facility. Samsung, though riding the same AI wave, lags in valuation elasticity due to weaker logic and foundry segments, potentially hastening asset divestitures. Over the next 12–24 months, any slowdown in global AI capex or HBM adoption could trigger a KOSPI valuation collapse: with over half its market cap tied to just two chip firms, systemic fragility now rivals that of the 2000 dot-com bubble.