South Korean chip giant SK Hynix has raised a record-breaking $26.5bn ahead of its Wall Street debut amid soaring demand for semiconductors used in AI.
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SK Hynix said on Friday that it had sold 177.9 million American depositary shares (ADS) at $149 each ahead of its listing on the New York-based Nasdaq stock exchange, News.Az<\/a> reports, citing Al Jazeera<\/a>.<\/p>\n ADS are US dollar-denominated shares of a foreign company that can be bought and sold on the US market.<\/p>\n SK Hynix\u2019s 177.9 million ADSs are equivalent to 18 million ordinary shares.<\/p>\n SK Hynix\u2019s initial public offering (IPO) marks the largest-ever listing by a foreign company in the US, surpassing Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba\u2019s $25bn debut in 2014.<\/p>\n The listing also ranks as the second-largest globally, after SpaceX\u2019s record-breaking $85.7bn Nasdaq listing in June.<\/p>\n Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the listing was more than seven times oversubscribed.<\/p>\n Dilin Wu, a research strategist at Pepperstone in Melbourne, Australia, said the market reception had exceeded \u201ceven the most optimistic expectations\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cSeven times oversubscribed, about $171bn in orders for a $24-28bn deal, and this happened while the semiconductor sector was actively selling off and the Kospi was in a circuit breaker week,\u201d Wu told Al Jazeera, referring to South Korea\u2019s benchmark stock market index.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the SK Hynix ADR pricing says one thing very clearly: the AI memory cycle is real, the earnings are real, and global capital has simply never had easy access to the best pure memory play in the space,\u201d Wu said.<\/p>\n