Key points
- SK Hynix set a target in March for at least 100 trillion won ($70B USD) in net cash, and reached it in about four months with help from a $28B ADR offering in July.
- A separate June report said the company would return a similar 100 trillion won ($70B USD) to shareholders, including a 40 trillion won ($28B USD) buyback. SK Hynix denied it.
- Analysts are landing on similar numbers anyway: up to 100 trillion won ($70B USD) at SK Hynix, and 131.8 trillion won ($92.6B USD) at Samsung.
- Still no announcement. SK Hynix fell 10.37% Thursday as the Kospi triggered its 24th sell sidecar of the year, closing down 4.58% at 6,296.38 while the Kosdaq closed up 0.26%.
SK Hynix has two different 100 trillion won ($70B USD) numbers attached to it right now, and they point in opposite directions. One is a target the company set for itself in March, and it looks like SK Hynix has already reached it. The other is a number a news report put on the table in June for what the company might hand back to shareholders, also near 100 trillion won ($70B USD), and SK Hynix denied that one.
The target from March
On March 25, at SK Hynix's 78th regular shareholders meeting in Icheon, chief executive Kwak No-jung put a number on it. "We're targeting a net cash position of 100 trillion won or more," Kwak said. "We need something like 100 trillion won to keep investment and growth going without interruption." SK Hynix had filed its F-1 registration with the US Securities and Exchange Commission the day before, on March 24, the first step toward the ADR listing.
Getting there early
SK Hynix ended 2025 with 34.94 trillion won ($24.4B USD) of net cash. By June 30, that had more than doubled to 69.37 trillion won ($48.7B USD). SK Hynix turned 76.3% of its revenue into profit that quarter, a bigger share than TSMC or Nvidia managed over the same stretch.
SK Hynix listed on the Nasdaq on July 10. It brought in 40 trillion won ($28B USD) selling new stock, less than the 45.45 trillion won it had first planned to raise. That money isn't in the 69.37 trillion won figure above. It came in after the quarter had already closed. Korean financial site Bloter ran the numbers anyway, and its guess is that SK Hynix is sitting on about 108 trillion won ($75.8B USD) right now, above the target Kwak set in March. SK Hynix itself hasn't confirmed a number since the quarter closed. Its next scheduled results are for the third quarter, in October.
The other 100 trillion won
A completely separate 100 trillion won figure had already been circulating since June. Hankyung reported that SK Hynix was preparing a shareholder return package near that size for the fourth quarter, with a 40 trillion won buyback inside it, a little over 2% of its shares and close to the amount of new stock SK Hynix had just sold on the Nasdaq. SK Hynix denied it, saying the company hadn't reviewed the specific figures in the report. The denial held through two record-breaking earnings calls in late July. It held again in statements both companies gave Reuters on August 5. Both promised bigger shareholder returns. Neither named an amount, a method or a date.
For two months now, SK Hynix has quietly built close to 100 trillion won toward one goal, a cash reserve. It won't confirm spending a similar amount on a different goal entirely.
What the math says now
Independent of the denied report, analysts doing their own arithmetic on both companies' cash keep landing in the same neighborhood. Ryu Hyung-geun, an analyst at Daishin Securities, connected the two 100 trillion won figures directly in a recent note. "SK Hynix set a 'net cash of 100 trillion won' target in March, and accounting for the capital that came in through the ADR offering, it's estimated to have already passed that target," Ryu wrote. "Because of that, the resources for shareholder returns are also plentiful, an environment where up to 100 trillion won could go into share buybacks, cancellations, and special dividends combined."
Samsung's side of the math is public too. Its three-year policy, 2024 through 2026, returns half of cumulative free cash flow. Regular dividends already paid come to about 29.4 trillion won. Subtract that, and Samsung Electronics has about 131.8 trillion won ($92.6B USD) of additional capacity. Lee Soo-rim, an analyst at DS Investment Securities, ran the yield math on that pool. "Returning just 15% of this as a special dividend alone would already push the common stock dividend yield above 2% at the current share price," Lee wrote. "Assuming a 40% special dividend, the common stock yield is projected at 4.5%, a very high dividend yield even among large domestic stocks." Samsung's ordinary dividend yield has run closer to 1% in recent years.
The comparison investors keep making
Kioxia, the Japanese memory maker, reported weaker earnings this quarter. It still promised to buy back about 5.5% of its own stock, worth close to 800 billion won, and split its shares three for one. Kioxia's stock rose 5.27%. SK Hynix reported a record quarter the same week, and its stock fell instead.
Korean investors keep bringing up that comparison this week. A smaller competitor with weaker earnings got rewarded for giving a number. SK Hynix has more cash than its own target and still hasn't.
Two sidecars, opposite directions
The market ran out of patience again on Thursday. The Kospi opened down 1.81% and kept falling. A sell-side sidecar fired at 10:18 a.m., the 24th time this year. The index closed down 4.58% at 6,296.38, after falling as low as 6,238.32 during the day. Foreign investors sold 3.329 trillion won more than they bought. Institutions sold 122.9 billion won. Retail investors bought 3.341 trillion won more than they sold, buying into the drop.
SK Hynix fell 10.37% to 1,495,000 won ($1,050 USD). Samsung Electronics closed at 235,000 won ($165 USD), down 6.30%. SK Square dropped 13.32%. Samsung Electro-Mechanics lost 9.37%.
Kang Jin-hyeok, a research director at Shinhan Investment Securities, said the sidecar fired despite otherwise stable macro conditions. Chip-stock swings drove the drop, Kang said.
The Kosdaq went the other way. It fell as much as 2.57% intraday, to 779.08, then closed up 0.26% at 801.67. Two markets moved in opposite directions the same morning. Still no number from either company on what happens to the cash.
Sources
- 노컷뉴스, on Kwak No-jung's March 25 shareholders meeting remarks and the 100 trillion won net cash target
- 블로터, on the estimated 108 trillion won current net cash figure and the ADR proceeds
- 허프포스트코리아, on Ryu Hyung-geun's and Lee Soo-rim's shareholder return analysis
- 아주경제, on Thursday's Kospi sidecar and the Kosdaq's opposite close
- Our earlier coverage: SK Hynix's ADR quiet period and the denied June report, the August 5 Reuters statements
Figures are converted at approximately 1,424 won to the US dollar. Quotes originally in Korean are translated. This is general market commentary and not investment advice.
