On September 30, SK Hynix’s American depositary shares closed at US$184.15 on the Nasdaq. Earlier that day in Seoul, one ordinary share closed at 1,776,000 won, about $1,308.80.
Ten ADSs represent one Seoul share, so each ADS’s slice was worth about $130.88. Comparing those two closing prices gives the ADSs a 40.7% premium. The markets close at different times, so the comparison also captures price moves in between.
Most foreign stocks listed in New York do not trade this way. As of October 1, 28 of the 32 US-traded foreign stocks I track against their home listings were within 5% of parity.
SK Hynix has the widest gap on the list, making it a useful test of how much of the “Korea discount” reflects how easily investors can buy the shares.
What exactly are Americans buying?
SK Hynix sold 177.9 million ADSs at $149 each on July 9, raising $26.5 billion in the largest ADS offering on record. The shares began trading the next day and now trade under the ticker SKHY.
Before that, most Americans could reach SK Hynix only through a thinly traded over-the-counter line. Samsung Electronics, the other Korean memory giant, still has no US exchange listing.
SKHY traded about 20 million shares a day on average in the two weeks through September 30, worth more than $3.5 billion a day at the September 30 price.
Normally, when an ADR trades above its home shares, brokers buy the local stock and convert it into new ADRs until the gap closes. That route is restricted for SK Hynix.
The ADSs from the July offering represent about 2.5% of the company’s shares, and Seoul Economic Daily reported that converting more is impossible without procedures equivalent to an additional listing. Otherwise, the company can create new ADSs only after converting existing ones back into Seoul shares.
The premium has moved a lot inside that constraint. It hit 60.1% on July 30 after Seoul fell on the company’s earnings, three days after touching a low of 15.3%.
How does SK Hynix compare with Micron?
Micron is the closest American alternative, and the two are similar in size.
Micron reported $54.2 billion of revenue and $43.8 billion of operating income in its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended September 3. For the quarter ended June 30, SK Hynix reported revenue of 79.3 trillion won, about $58.5 billion, and operating profit of 60.5 trillion won.
The difference is in the product AI buyers want most. SK Hynix held 50% of high-bandwidth memory revenue in the second quarter, according to Counterpoint Research, against 33% for Samsung and 18% for Micron.
High-bandwidth memory, or HBM, stacks DRAM chips so they can feed data to AI processors such as Nvidia’s. In the broader DRAM market, Samsung led with 39.4%, and SK Hynix held 24.9% to Micron’s 23.3%, according to TrendForce.
On September 30, SK Hynix was valued at about 1,294 trillion won in Seoul, or roughly $954 billion. Micron’s market value was about $1.2 trillion. Applying SKHY’s price to the whole company implies a valuation of about $1.34 trillion.
On October 1, Stock Analysis showed the Seoul shares trading at about 4.5 times forward earnings, against about 6.0 times for Micron. SKHY’s premium narrows that valuation gap, although an exact comparison requires prices and earnings estimates measured at the same time.
Can’t Americans just buy in Seoul?
Korea has removed several barriers. It scrapped its 30-year foreign investor registration requirement in December 2023, and a foreign individual can now open an account with a passport number. Nextrade, the country’s first alternative trading venue, opened on March 4, 2025, and stretched the trading day to 12 hours.
For an American retail investor, buying the Seoul shares directly still takes a broker with access to the Korea Exchange, a conversion into won and trading hours that fall overnight in New York. SKHY takes a ticker symbol.
Index providers see the same gap. In June, MSCI again left Korea off its watch list for an upgrade to developed-market status, citing the won’s limited offshore convertibility and slow uptake of omnibus accounts.
“While Korea has made meaningful progress on market access … MSCI typically looks for sustained evidence of implementation, usability and consistency,” said Benson Wu, Korea economist at Bank of America Global Research.
An upgrade would not be free either. Alexander Redman, chief equity strategist at CLSA, said developed-market status would take Korea from “a big fish in a little pond to a very small fish in a very large pond.”
What about governance?
Governance is the older explanation for the Korea discount, and Seoul has acted on it too. In July 2025, the National Assembly amended the Commercial Act so that directors owe a duty of loyalty to shareholders as well as the company, and must treat all shareholders fairly.
The two listings represent the same underlying business, with the same management and earnings. Yet investors pay substantially more for the US-traded shares. That doesn’t make governance irrelevant to Korea’s valuations.
It shows how much market access and limits on creating ADSs can matter for this particular stock.
David Han is the founder of AIStockWire.com, a daily tracker comparing 32 foreign stocks’ US and home-market prices.
