SK hynix set for Nasdaq after expected $28bn sale

South Korean chipmaker SK hynix is due to begin trading on New York's Nasdaq index on Friday after a share sale expected to raise $28 billion, in what could be one of the world's largest listings.

The company has not yet set its listing price. It is already traded on Seoul's Kospi index and said the cash from the US listing will help fund new chip factories, including in a new cluster in South Korea's southwest.

SK hynix has benefited from demand for high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, chips used in artificial intelligence servers. Its market capitalisation recently passed $1 trillion, a milestone also reached by HBM rivals Samsung Electronics and Micron.

The company began in 1949 as Gukdo Construction and moved into microchips, phones and disk drives in 1983 as Hyundai Electronics. After the Asian financial crisis, losses and debt grew, leading to restructuring and a 2001 rebrand as Hynix Semiconductor.

Telecoms conglomerate SK Group bought Hynix in 2012. The company later invested in HBM, which is now in strong demand as governments and technology companies spend heavily on data centres for AI tools.

Jim Handy, a semiconductor expert at Objective Analysis, told AFP that the US listing was a smart move because SK hynix's valuation multiples on the Korean exchange were lower than those of similar companies listed in the United States.