SK Hynix’s US-listed shares extended gains on Thursday, driven by a double catalyst: confirmation that the conversion of local shares into American Depositary Receipts has hit a regulatory cap, and Alphabet’s bumper earnings that sent a powerful demand signal through the AI memory supply chain.
The Korea Securities Depository revealed that the entire 2.5% threshold for converting Seoul-listed stock into ADRs has been exhausted via the initial $26.5 billion issuance on July 10. With fresh ADR creation effectively blocked, the supply available to US investors is now constrained, allowing the New York-traded shares to sustain a premium that reached as high as 51% over their Korean counterparts and still hovered around 33% on Wednesday. Traders can no longer exploit arbitrage to shrink that gap, so the premium is expected to linger.
Alphabet added fuel by reporting second-quarter revenue of $119.8 billion and an 82% year-over-year surge in its Cloud segment. The company raised its full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance to $195–$205 billion, citing an acceleration in capacity delivery to meet growing AI demand. That directly benefits SK Hynix, a leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI servers.
SK Hynix stock jumped as much as 12% intraday, helping the KOSPI index rally 4.8% to a fresh year-to-date high. The board separately approved a ₩7.09 trillion investment in its Cheongju advanced packaging facility on July 22, reinforcing expansion plans just before the company’s Q2 earnings release on July 29.
