The chipmaker priced 177.9 million receipts at US$149 each, a 2.7% premium to its Seoul price
SK Hynix raised about US$26.5bn in its Nasdaq debut on Friday, and its American depositary receipts jumped roughly 14 percent at the open, a signal that investor appetite for chip stocks has held up despite the sector's recent pullback.
The South Korean memory maker, already listed in Seoul, priced 177.9m ADRs at US$149 each, a 2.7 percent premium to its average share price over the previous three trading days, according to a US regulatory filing.
The receipts opened at US$170 and closed at US$168.01, up 12.76 percent from the offer price, The Korea Times reported.
They trade under the ticker SKHY.
Demand ran more than seven times the shares on offer, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The sale ranks as the second-largest in the US this year behind SpaceX's record June listing, and BNN Bloomberg reported it as the biggest initial US share sale ever by a foreign company.
It also lifted SK Hynix into rare company, carrying a market value above US$1tn.
For the banks, the listing delivered a substantial payday.
Underwriters earned close to US$260m, or about 0.97 percent of the amount raised, Reuters reported, citing the company's filings.
That is a higher take as a share of deal size than the 0.67 percent, or US$500m, bankers collected on SpaceX's much larger US$75bn IPO.
Citigroup earned more than US$70m, about 20 percent more than the other banks on the deal, a person with direct knowledge told Reuters; Citigroup also served as joint global co-ordinator and depository bank and declined to comment on its fees.
Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan were the other lead underwriters.
Ahead of the deal, the Financial Times had estimated the fee pool at more than US$140m.
The offer's real draw for many buyers was access rather than the capital itself.
Sette, co-founder of Reflexivity, said the listing offers US investors large-cap exposure to the AI-memory theme, according to Reuters.
SK Hynix chose Nasdaq to reach US demand and valuations higher than Seoul offers, he said.
Later issuers could face a more selective market, he added.
Analysts frame the listing as a test of the so-called Korea discount, the tendency of South Korean firms to trade below global peers over governance concerns.
According to LSEG data cited by CNBC, SK Hynix trades at a lower forward earnings multiple than US rival Micron despite its lead in high-bandwidth memory.
Rolf Bulk of Futurum Group told CNBC he sees "room for that gap to narrow with the ADR listing," while not expecting the discount to close fully.
Zavier Wong, a market analyst at eToro, was more skeptical, telling CNBC that "Hynix's stock going up isn't the same as the discount shrinking."
SK Hynix supplies the high-bandwidth memory that powers AI accelerators from Nvidia, and the two firms announced a multi-year partnership in June.
The company plans to fund new factories and equipment from the proceeds, part of a wider expansion that includes a US$4bn plant in West Lafayette, Indiana, scheduled for completion in 2028.
The sector's history tempers the enthusiasm.
Memory demand runs in cycles, and past booms have ended in oversupply and price collapses.
Daniel Newman, chief executive of Futurum Group, told CNBC that memory follows this pattern in every megacycle or supercycle, and that "it always crashes hard."
Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, told Reuters that buyers will weigh the past year's rally against the latest volatility.
He said "oversupply fears are inherent to the industry."
