Key points
- Solidigm reportedly picks banks for a Nasdaq IPO
- A former SK Hynix president's fund may invest first
- An estimate of SK Hynix's earnings hit
- SK Hynix's board may have to vote
SK Hynix's US storage unit Solidigm has reportedly selected banks for a Nasdaq IPO that could raise about $10 billion as early as 2027. The proposed listing could value Solidigm at up to $100 billion and has prompted questions in Korea about how SK Hynix's shareholders would share in that value.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will lead the offering, with JPMorgan, Citigroup, and UBS also involved, Bloomberg reported on Oct. 7. The two lead banks are also arranging a funding round ahead of the IPO. An SK Hynix spokesperson said no concrete plans have been confirmed.
SK Hynix (000660) closed at 1,272,000 won ($951) in Seoul on Friday. It's down 28% in October, by our math, as chip stocks have fallen sharply this month.
In Korea, people call this a duplicate listing, when a parent company and a company the parent owns are both on the stock market. Solidigm sits at the bottom of a long chain of owners. Above Solidigm are a US company called AI Company, then SK Hynix, SK Square, and SK Inc. SK Hynix, SK Square, and SK Inc. already trade in Seoul, so a Solidigm listing would make four listed companies in one chain. We wrote about that chain in August.
If Solidigm issues new shares to outside investors, SK Hynix would indirectly own less of Solidigm and get a smaller share of Solidigm's future profits. Solidigm had 12.25 trillion won ($9.2B) of sales in the first half of this year, about 9% of SK Hynix's total.
A former SK Hynix president's fund may invest before the listing
Some of the questions are about who gets to invest before Solidigm lists. Noh Jong-won (노종원), a former SK Hynix president, started a US investment firm called Techbridge Investment. In 2020, as SK Hynix's chief financial officer, Noh led the deal to buy Intel's NAND flash business, which became Solidigm. He was later a co-CEO of Solidigm, from 2023 to 2025.
Chosun Ilbo (조선일보) reported that investment bankers name Techbridge as one of the main investors in Solidigm's pre-IPO round. That investment hasn't been officially announced.
Three other SK companies have also committed money to AI Company. SK Inc., SK Innovation, and SK Telecom agreed to put a total of $1.11 billion into AI Company by 2030. Some investors have criticized this as buying in early, before expectations of a listing push the price up. SK Hynix has said the investments are part of the group's AI plans.
The Korea Corporate Governance Forum (한국기업거버넌스포럼) has warned that this could move wealth away from SK Hynix's shareholders. The forum says the same profit is worth more to Chairman Chey Tae-won (최태원) depending on which SK company earns it. SK Inc. and SK Telecom are closer to Chey in the chain of owners than SK Hynix is. The concern is whether the terms of those investments fairly protected SK Hynix's existing shareholders. Whether any wealth actually moves depends on those terms, and on how much Solidigm is worth when Solidigm lists.
Bloomberg Intelligence expects a 1% to 3% drop in SK Hynix's earnings per share
Not everyone expects a big loss for SK Hynix shareholders. Masahiro Wakasugi, a senior industry analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said a listing could reduce how much SK Hynix has to invest and help SK Hynix's profits over time, Herald Business (헤럴드경제) reported. Solidigm could then pay for storage factories and research with outside money. SK Hynix could put that money into HBM, the AI memory chips SK Hynix is best known for, and other businesses.
Bloomberg Intelligence assumed Solidigm earns about 10% of SK Hynix's profit. If outside investors bought 10% of Solidigm, SK Hynix's earnings per share would fall about 1%. If they bought 15%, it would fall about 1.5%. Even at 20% to 30%, the drop would be about 2% to 3%.
Bloomberg Intelligence also said the long chain of companies could keep investors from fully valuing the group. SK Square traded at a 42% discount to its net asset value on Oct. 6.
"This shouldn't be seen as a duplicate listing of a subsidiary. It makes more sense to see it as getting back the money spent buying the business, and raising money for the next investments," said Kim Young-gun (김영건), an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities (미래에셋증권).
SK Hynix paid about $9 billion for the Intel business. At a $100 billion value, Solidigm would be worth more than 11 times that. SK Hynix would still own part of Solidigm, through AI Company, after a listing. How much of that value stays with SK Hynix's shareholders would depend on how much each side owns and on the deal terms.
The ownership chain also limits how SK Hynix can raise money. If SK Hynix sold new shares to raise money, SK Square would have to buy some too, to keep owning the 20% of SK Hynix that Korean law requires.
SK Hynix's board may have to vote
Korea's new rules on duplicate listings started on Aug. 3, and they cover listings in other countries too. A securities lawyer told Money Today Broadcasting (머니투데이방송) that the rules apply to SK Hynix, even though Solidigm is what Korea calls a grandchild company, two steps below SK Hynix in the chain. In that lawyer's view, SK Hynix's board would have to study how a listing affects shareholders, plan ways to protect them, and then vote for or against the listing and explain why in public. The rules don't say when that vote has to happen.
The Korea Exchange can't stop a listing on the Nasdaq, though. A company that breaks these rules could face a penalty of up to 1 billion won ($747,000).
"Their principles for using the money and their policy for returning money to shareholders need to be laid out together," said Lee Young-gon (이영곤), head of research at Toss Securities (토스증권).
Quotes are translated from Korean. Won figures are converted at 1,337.80 won to the dollar, the Naver Finance rate on Oct. 16, 2026.
