U.S-listed shares of SK Hynix Inc (NASDAQ:SKHY) fell over 6% to $141.55 a piece in premarket trading on Thursday amid global volatility in technology stocks.
The stock briefly hit South Korea’s 30% daily limit-down in South Korea’s first alternative trading system, Nextrade‘s premarket session, after only 11 shares were traded. Critics say the current premarket trading system allows small-volume trades to trigger sharp price swings, increasing the risk of investor losses.
The stock closed 10.37% lower in the Kospi earlier in the day, while Samsung Electronics shares also declined 6.13% amid the broader drop in Asian technology stocks.
Last week, SK Hynix shares surged nearly 30% in Seoul to a record high, hitting the Korea Exchange’s daily trading limit, marking the company’s strongest single-day gain on record.
Memory Stocks Face Margin Pressure
Tech stocks have experienced sharp volatility in recent sessions, particularly in South Korea’s semiconductor sector. Despite beating fourth-quarter earnings estimates, SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ:SNDK) shares fell after hours on Wednesday, as investors focused on cautious guidance and concerns about the sustainability of the memory boom.
Susquehanna analyst Mehdi Hosseini said the key question is whether memory makers can maintain gross margins near 80% as AI shifts from training to inference workloads, even though the transition could ultimately boost NAND demand.
SK Hynix Gets Wall Street Boost
Despite the swings, JPMorgan said the AI investment cycle remains intact, arguing that hyperscalers are unlikely to scale back spending despite investor concerns over the sustainability of heavy AI investments.
"Stepping away from the share price moves, we do not see any fundamental indicators that signal meaningful weakness in the next 6-12 months," JPMorgan wrote, as reported by CNBC.
SK Hynix ADR shares rose Tuesday after multiple Wall Street firms initiated coverage with bullish ratings and price targets. Cantor Fitzgerald, Rosenblatt, and Needham all launched coverage with Buy/Overweight ratings, while the broader market also advanced.
On Tuesday, SK hynix and Sandisk introduced the first standard specifications for High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) through the Open Compute Project, with Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Google and Tenstorrent among the consortium partners.
Read Also: Alphabet Stock Dives as Key AI Leadership Exits
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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