Hana Securities reiterated its "Buy" recommendation on SK Hynix on the 26th and raised its target price substantially to 3.6m won per share — implying upside of roughly 23% from the closing price of 2.917m won on 25th June.
Analyst Kim Rok-ho projects that SK Hynix will post revenue of 87.1trn won in the second quarter of 2026, a 292% increase year on year and 66% quarter on quarter, with operating profit of 67.6trn won — up 638% year on year and 80% quarter on quarter. For the full year 2026, his operating profit forecast has been revised up by 8% to 293.9trn won, while the 2027 estimate has been lifted by 18% to 435.1trn won. The principal driver behind the upgrades is an expectation that conventional DRAM prices — particularly LPDDR variants — will exceed earlier assumptions in the second half of 2026.
Notably, the 2027 forecast does not yet incorporate any benefit from higher HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) pricing. Kim argues that as HBM4 — the next iteration of the specialised chips that power artificial-intelligence accelerators — becomes the dominant product, the blended average selling price across SK Hynix's memory portfolio should rise. Should HBM4 pricing be set at a meaningful premium, 2027 earnings could be revised higher still.
The valuation case has also strengthened on two fronts. First, a timetable has been confirmed for SK Hynix to list American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) in the United States, broadening the company's access to global capital and potentially expanding its investor base. Second, results from Micron Technology, SK Hynix's closest American rival, provided new detail on long-term supply contracts. Kim notes that revenue tied to such agreements is highly predictable and therefore warrants a valuation premium over spot-market memory sales.
SK Hynix currently accounts for 28.44% of the KOSPI — South Korea's main stock exchange index — by market capitalisation, which stands at approximately 2,079trn won, underscoring the stock's outsized influence on the broader Korean equity market.