{"text":[[{"start":14.4,"text":"SK Hynix has raised $26.5bn in its Nasdaq debut, marking the largest-ever US listing by a foreign company as AI drives rocketing demand for the South Korean group’s memory chips."}],[{"start":29.1,"text":"The company’s American depositary shares priced at $149 per ADS, a slight premium to SK Hynix’s closing share price in Seoul on Thursday. The offering was seven times oversubscribed, with more than 500 investment firms vying for shares, according to two people familiar with the matter."}],[{"start":47.85,"text":"Earlier in the week investment firms Situational Awareness — led by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner — as well as Baillie Gifford and Coatue indicated they could take as much as $7bn of the offering. One of the people familiar with the deal said the firms’ final allocation was reduced because of the high demand. "}],[{"start":68.5,"text":"The share sale adds to a bumper summer for Wall Street, which has roared back to life on the back of a flurry of huge tech deals. Elon Musk’s SpaceX raised about $86bn last month, while Google parent Alphabet moved to pull in a similar amount. "}],[{"start":83.3,"text":"Bank of America, JPMorgan, Citi and Goldman Sachs are the lead underwriters on SK Hynix’s deal and could rake in fees of more than $140mn. "}],[{"start":93.45,"text":"Rising prices for SK Hynix’s memory chips helped its first-quarter revenue nearly triple year on year to Won 52.6tn ($34.5bn). Its shares are up more than 600 per cent over the past year on the Kospi in Seoul, its main listing, bringing its market cap to Won 1,558tn ($1.04tn)."}],[{"start":117.65,"text":"The Korea-traded shares slipped 2.5 per cent during early trading on Friday."}],[{"start":123.2,"text":"SK Hynix will pour the proceeds from the US listing into expanding its manufacturing capacity as it races to keep pace with AI-driven demand. The company is building new chip fabrication plants in Korea and purchasing extreme-ultraviolet lithography scanners from the Netherlands’ ASML."}],[{"start":141.7,"text":"As the leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips to Nvidia, the group has emerged as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom, outpacing larger rival Samsung Electronics to capture more than half of the global HBM market. HBM chips enable the high-speed transfer of the vast amounts of data required for AI workloads. "}],[{"start":164.85,"text":"Analysts expect the US listing to boost SK Hynix’s valuation and narrow its discount to global peers such as Micron. Kim Dong-won, head of research at KB Securities, said SK Hynix’s Korean-listed shares were poised for a re-rating, and currently traded at 4.5 times forward earnings."}],[{"start":184.5,"text":"Kim forecasts the group will turn an operating profit of Won290tn this year, rising to Won468tn next year. "}],[{"start":194,"text":"“There is still considerable upside potential,” Kim said. “The chip rally isn’t over yet.”"}],[{"start":200.05,"text":"Additional reporting by William Sandlund in Hong Kong"}],[{"start":212.1,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1783645081_5108.mp3"}