JPMorgan Chase: Concerns over SK Hynix’s stock price drop are overblown, market sentiment is expected to improve in the medium term.

JPMorgan Chase believes market concerns over SK Hynix's stock price decline are excessive. With the early announcement of its shareholder return plan and the company maintaining its competitiveness in High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), its mid-term market sentiment is expected to improve. Key upcoming catalysts include: the shareholder return plan will be officially announced by the end of Q3 2026 (i.e., the end of September), and HBM contract price updates are also expected to be confirmed around the same period. SK Hynix has brought forward the announcement timeline of its shareholder return plan from "within the year" to the end of Q3. JPMorgan projects the company's cumulative free cash flow over the next three years will exceed 800 trillion won, giving it sufficient capacity for shareholder returns; taking into account proceeds from the sale of stakes in Kioxia and other gains, its shareholder return scale may be higher than that of other global memory chip firms. The company also plans to invest around 54 trillion won in infrastructure construction, including 35.2 trillion won for the Yongin Y2 DRAM plant and 19.1 trillion won for the Cheongju M17 NAND plant. In response to reports that SK Hynix's HBM4 is priced 50% lower than competitors, JPMorgan deems these claims inaccurate, noting market concerns are overblown. It forecasts SK Hynix's HBM price growth in 2026 will be less than 40% year-over-year, with reasons including the company's need to prioritize higher-margin long-term supply contracts for DDR5, LPDDR5, and NAND, and its approach to relations with top client NVIDIA based on multi-year partnerships and long-term procurement perspectives. Since HBM is typically re-priced annually, the importance of short-term pricing diminishes after securing 3-5 year long-term contract orders.