2 Million Won SK hynix?... "It Could Rise to 2.8 Million Won"

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[The Financial News] Analysts in the securities industry say SK hynix's stock could rise to 2.8 million won. They expect the pace of memory price increases and earnings improvement to continue outpacing the stock's gains for the time being. On the 12th, Kim Dong-won, an analyst at KB Securities, raised his target price from 2 million won to 2.8 million won, saying in a report, "Given that the full-scale operation of new memory production lines is scheduled for after 2027, memory demand is expected to exceed supply at least through next year, effectively ushering in an era of zero memory supply."
SK hynix's current stock price stands at 4.8 times its 12-month forward price-earnings ratio (PER). KB Securities calculated a target price of 2.8 million won by applying a 12-month forward PER of 7.2 times.
Kim said, "The pace of upward revisions to earnings forecasts is outstripping the pace of stock price gains." He added, "Reflecting higher memory prices in 2026, we have raised our operating profit estimates for 2026 and 2027 to 270 trillion won and 418 trillion won, respectively."
He also said, "In particular, the upward trend in memory prices and the surge in demand for server DRAM and enterprise SSDs driven by expanded investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure are likely to continue for a long time, even after 2027."
Operating profit for the second quarter is estimated at 67 trillion won, up sevenfold from a year earlier, with an operating margin of 77.6%. The company is expected to post a surprise earnings beat.
Kim said, "Agentic AI, which makes decisions and acts on its own, and the on-device AI market are still only in their early stages." He added, "The Physical AI market, including humanoid robots and autonomous driving, has not even opened yet."
He went on to say, "In particular, the Physical AI market centered on humanoid robots, which will become a key pillar of the AI 3.0 era, is expected to begin expanding in earnest from 2028." He added, "VLM models that combine vision, language and action, a variety of edge devices, and real-time inference with no latency are essential."
Finally, he said, "Accordingly, memory semiconductors are likely to be re-evaluated in future AI infrastructure as a core competitive asset that determines the performance of the entire AI system, not just a simple component." He added, "If we also consider the highly promising long-term growth of the Physical AI market, AI so far has been nothing more than a trailer. The main feature of AI has not even started yet."
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fair@fnnews.com Han Young-joon Reporter