SK Hynix 1,000% Annual Gain Not Enough? Top Wall Street Funds Increase Stakes, Will HBM Chip Supply Shortage Escalate Further? - TradingKey

SK Hynix, as the global leader in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, has driven a more than 1,000% stock gain this year, despite its strong valuation. The Janus Henderson Global Technology Leaders Fun... Read original →

SK Hynix’s 72% operating margin—far exceeding historical semiconductor norms—stems from its HBM dominance and will force Samsung and Micron to accelerate 3nm HBM4 development and revamp packaging strategies. Technologically, bottlenecks are shifting from EUV tools to advanced materials like silicon interposers and TSVs, straining TSMC’s CoWoS ecosystem. Geopolitically, while U.S. pressure under the CHIPS Act may target Korean HBM exports to China, SK Hynix’s $12.9B Cheongju facility is already locked into multi-year deals with NVIDIA and Microsoft, raising intervention costs. Over the next 18 months, AI inference workloads will double per-GPU HBM demand, but yield ramp cycles (6–9 months) ensure sustained shortages. SK Hynix’s pricing power will cement a new era of persistently high memory margins.