SK Hynix Bulls and Bears Dig In After a 24% Week Leaves the Chipmaker at 1,272,000 KRW

One of the roughest stretches in years for Asian semiconductor stocks has opened a visible rift between jittery institutional money and analysts who insist the memory cycle has plenty of room left to run.

Goldman Sachs planted its flag on the optimistic side on Sunday, lifting its 12-month price target on SK Hynix to 3.5 million Won. The US investment bank's buy case rests on a global memory supply squeeze that it expects to persist into 2028.

The call lands just after a week in which the Korean benchmark's biggest chip name shed 24 percent and closed Friday at 1,272,000,00 KRW — its steepest weekly percentage decline since November 2008. Even so, the stock is up 96 percent since the start of the year.

Foreign Funds Beat a Record Retreat

Data from the Korea Exchange lays out the scale of the exodus. Overseas investors dumped SK Hynix shares worth a net 5.35 trillion Won over the week, dragging the foreign ownership stake down to 48.85 percent — the lowest level since December 2021.

Behind the selling: mounting doubts about the near-term profitability and financing of multibillion-dollar AI data-center spending, compounded by worries over US interest rates. A fresh competitive signal added to the unease — Chinese rival ChangXin Memory Technologies unveiled a denser DRAM design roughly a week ago, along with plans for server memory by year-end.

Not everyone reads the slide as a verdict on fundamentals. Cho Sang-hyun of Hyundai Asset Management called Friday's drop a temporary overreaction to speculative fears of an AI valuation bubble. Chip industry conditions remain stable, he argued, because long-term supply contracts for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) put a lid on the risk of inventory gluts.

Two Targets, One Direction

Goldman is not the only house leaning bullish. Meritz Securities reaffirmed its "Buy" rating on October 12 and raised its target to 3.2 million Won from 3.1 million, projecting third-quarter 2026 operating profit of 80.1 trillion Won.

Estimates elsewhere are more conservative on the quarter but still constructive on capital returns. Hana Securities pegs operating profit for the just-ended third quarter at 7.79 trillion Won and expects shareholder distributions of at least 3 trillion Won. The company has already committed to buying back and canceling 40 trillion Won of its own shares and returning more than half of free cash flow from 2025 through 2027 to investors.

On the technology front, SK Hynix is concentrating on highly integrated components for server environments while newcomers try to close the gap in standard DRAM. Goldman sees no near-term threat to the incumbents' edge: reliable mass-production yields and the demanding qualification processes of industrial customers should keep new rival products at bay for years. The bank expects supply of standard DRAM, NAND flash and HBM to be even tighter in 2027 than in 2026.

October 28 on the Calendar

Hard numbers arrive soon. A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission dated October 14 sets SK Hynix's third-quarter 2026 results for October 28 at 9:00 a.m. Seoul time, with a webcast for investor questions to follow.

Until then, market watchers are focused on whether demand for computing power can absorb the capacity being built out across Asia — the question that will decide which side of the divide, the nervous funds or the optimistic analysts, has it right.