Mirae Asset Securities reaffirmed its "buy" rating on SK Hynix (KOSPI: 000660) on 11th August 2026, maintaining a target price of 2,800,000 won. With the shares currently trading at 1,420,000 won, that implies upside of 97.2%.
The brokerage argues that the stock's 51% decline from its peak constitutes an excessive sell-off, particularly given the strength of the company's operating environment and the outlook for the memory industry. On a 12-month forward basis, the shares are trading at 1.8 times book value and 3.5 times earnings — valuations that have retreated to levels last seen before the artificial intelligence investment boom took hold.
Earnings set to surge
Mirae Asset projects SK Hynix's annual operating profit for 2026 at 26.8 trillion won, a 467.9% increase on the prior year's 4.7 trillion won. Revenue is forecast to reach 34.7 trillion won, up 257% from 9.7 trillion won. Operating margins are expected to expand dramatically, from 48.6% in 2025 to 77.3% in 2026.
The engine behind this earnings explosion is surging demand from AI server manufacturers for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a specialised type of DRAM that stacks multiple memory dies to deliver far greater data throughput than conventional chips. DRAM division revenues are forecast to more than triple, from 75.2 trillion won in 2025 to 259.2 trillion won in 2026. Average selling prices for DRAM are expected to rise 161%, from $0.55 per gigabit to $1.44 per gigabit. Return on equity is projected to reach 103.9% — a figure that dwarfs the company's historical average of 19% between 2015 and 2025 and would represent an all-time high.
The Solidigm question
One issue attracting market attention is the fate of Solidigm, SK Hynix's NAND flash storage subsidiary. On 28th January 2026, SK Hynix committed up to $10bn to SK Hynix NAND Product Solutions, Solidigm's parent entity. Stakes in Solidigm worth a combined $1.1bn were sold by SK Group affiliates, including the holding company SK Inc., SK Innovation and SK Telecom.
Mirae Asset judges that the partial disposal of Solidigm equity will have a limited impact on SK Hynix's overall valuation. It notes that Solidigm's solid-state drives are based on QLC (quad-level cell) NAND technology targeted at enterprise server applications, which differs from the TLC (triple-level cell) design and manufacturing expertise that sits at SK Hynix's core. Nevertheless, the brokerage views the potential fundraising — which could generate capacity for roughly $15bn of investment in the United States — as a positive, whether deployed for mergers and acquisitions or follow-on capital spending.
Scope for a substantial shareholder return
Mirae Asset also highlights the prospect of an unusually large shareholder return programme. The brokerage estimates that SK Hynix could distribute approximately 40 trillion won in special returns to shareholders. Free cash flow in 2026 is forecast at around 18 trillion won, with net cash accumulating to 173 trillion won. Even after setting aside 100 trillion won as a prudent liquidity reserve, some 70–80 trillion won would remain available, and returning half of that sum to shareholders is deemed entirely feasible. Under the most generous scenario modelled, the dividend yield at the current share price could reach 3.9%.
Mirae Asset highlights three key points in support of this thesis: the formal assessment period for a special shareholder return programme runs to end-2027, making the current moment — with the stock down 51% from its peak — an opportune time for share buybacks; and the larger the eventual return, the more it would validate confidence in the company's capacity to generate cash.
Risks worth heeding
Investors should nonetheless weigh several risks. The earnings forecasts in the report rest on an optimistic assumption that AI infrastructure investment continues unabated. Should global technology giants slow their capital spending on AI, should semiconductor export restrictions between the United States and China tighten further, or should the memory industry cycle turn sharply, the profit estimates could prove significantly wide of the mark.
The shares themselves tell a cautionary tale: SK Hynix's 2026 intra-year peak was 2,919,000 won; at 1,420,000 won, the stock has roughly halved. This suggests the market has already priced in a considerable degree of uncertainty and valuation anxiety. Mirae Asset interprets this as excessive pessimism, though readers should bear in mind that sell-side research reports are, by their nature, prone to an optimistic bias.
It is also noteworthy that Mirae Asset's own operating profit estimate of 26.8 trillion won sits almost precisely in line with the broader market consensus of 26.6 trillion won. The convergence of expectations cuts both ways: it reduces the likelihood of a dramatic earnings surprise on the upside while equally limiting the room for a significant disappointment.