(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Seong-heum Cho = As SK Hynix continues to make large-scale investments in high-bandwidth memory (HBM), advanced packaging, and the Honam area semiconductor cluster in response to the artificial intelligence (AI) super cycle, concerns are deepening over financing for Solidigm, an American subsidiary.
In a situation where several large-scale semiconductor investments are being pursued simultaneously at the group level, Soliddigm, which has an opportunity to grow the eSSD (enterprise solid state drive) market, also needs investment, but the solution is becoming complicated due to the controversy over overlapping listings.
According to the industry on the 4th, SK Hynix recently stated in response to Solidigm's listing in the U.S., "Nothing has been confirmed. We will use long-term shareholder value as the standard for all decisions."
Recently, Solidigm is in need of large-scale investments to expand NAND production capacity and develop technology as the eSSD market for global artificial intelligence data centers (AIDC) is growing rapidly.
According to market research firm Omdia, Solidigm is contributing significantly to SK Hynix's second-place global NAND market share, but wafer production is stagnating from 930,000 in 2024 to 960,000 last year and 990,000 this year.
On the other hand, the wafer production of China's YMTC (Yangtze Memory), which started mass production of NAND in 2018, is expected to surpass Solidigm's (630,000 sheets) with 765,000 sheets in 2021, and is expected to reach 2.01 million sheets this year, more than twice that of Solidigme.
However, SK Hynix is planning to make a mid- to long-term investment worth 1,100 trillion won in the Yongin, Cheongju, and Honam regions, focusing on HBM and a high-tech packaging fab, so the burden of cash flow is already significant.
Last July, it also disclosed investment risks, saying, "If demand slows at the time of expansion of production facilities, financial soundness may be negatively affected due to oversupply."
Meanwhile, SK Group is leaving open the possibility of additional semiconductor investments in the United States and Japan.
SK Hynix's statement that "the fact that we have funds does not mean that it is best to make all investments with our own funds" is interpreted as a reflection of this situation.
Accordingly, it is known that SK Hynix is closely comparing and reviewing the value of the shares given to Solidigm to utilize external capital and the value of utilizing SK Hynix's own funds.
The statement that long-term shareholder value is the standard for all decisions is interpreted as an indirect rebuttal to some concerns that shareholder value will be diluted when raising external capital.
If external capital is raised through the issuance of new shares and invested in new fabs and research and development, additional business value can be created, and if Solidigm is recognized for its high corporate value and raises large capital with a small stake, the value of SK Hynix's shares can actually increase.
Until now, SK Hynix's corporate value has been evaluated focusing on HBM and DRAM, but there are also observations that Solidigm's listing will serve as an opportunity to confirm the value of SK Hynix's holdings, which have not been sufficiently reflected.
Kim Young-gun, a researcher at Mirae Asset Securities, said, "If we raise investment funds by selling Solidigm shares, we will secure investment capacity in the United States worth $15 billion (approximately 20.4 trillion won). It is appropriate to approach this issue in the nature of recovering investment from mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and expanding follow-up investment resources, rather than duplicate listing of subsidiaries."
SK Hynix plans to review Solidigm-related capital utilization plans by comprehensively considering the company's overall investment plan and financial capacity, while also reviewing the impact on existing shareholders and necessary shareholder protection measures.
