Quick Read
SK Hynix’s $29B treasury share cancellation, the largest in South Korean history, sent SKHY up 6% and dragged SNDK up 5% in sympathy.
DRAM concentrates 73% of assets in Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, amplifying both AI memory upcycle gains and any pricing rollover risk.
Micron’s buyback stays capped by CHIPS Act terms until December, while Cathie Wood avoids memory stocks as rising costs push engineers toward less memory-intensive AI.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Micron Technology didn’t make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
Shares of SK Hynix (NASDAQ:SKHY) are climbing 6% in Wednesday morning trading to $164.70 after the Korean memory giant approved the largest treasury share cancellation in the history of South Korean listed companies. The move follows a session in which SK Hynix stock closed down 9% at $155.62.
The announcement is lifting sentiment across memory names. Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) stock is up 3% to $967.93, while SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) shares are climbing 5% to $1,703. The Roundhill Memory ETF (CBOE:DRAM) is up 4% to $57.26 as the concentrated basket rides the same tape.
The rebound arrives amid a broader debate about how long the AI-driven memory upcycle can persist. Wednesday’s bounce answers Tuesday’s selloff, but the tension between record capital returns and record fab spending sits at the center of the story.
Record Treasury Share Cancellation Fuels the Move
SK Hynix approved a plan to repurchase and cancel 40 trillion won, about $28.6 billion, of treasury shares. The board resolution covers roughly 24.07 million shares, 3.3% of total shares outstanding, based on the closing price of 1,662,000 won the day before the vote. The repurchase period runs from August 20 through November 19, and all acquired shares will be canceled upon completion.
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Management also revised the 2025 to 2027 shareholder return commitment upward, moving from a ceiling of 50% of cumulative free cash flow to a floor above that level, delivered through repurchases, cancellations, and cash dividends. Fixed and special dividends are under consideration, with details due alongside third-quarter earnings likely in late October. The company said its intrinsic value “is not fully reflected in its current stock price.”
The scale is possible thanks to a fortress balance sheet. Net cash sat at approximately 69 trillion won, about $49.36 billion, at the end of the second quarter. Last week the company approved 54 trillion won of investment to build two new fabrication plants in South Korea, one for DRAM in Yongin and one for NAND flash in Cheongju.
