SK Hynix still has significant upside ahead, analysts say. Securities firms have raised their target price by 40%, arguing that the current share price reflects only the early stage of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s growth.
Kim Dong-won, head of research at KB Securities, on the 12th maintained a “Buy” rating on SK Hynix and raised his target price to 2.8 million won from 2 million won.
Kim said the pace of upward earnings revisions is outstripping the pace of share price gains, adding that there is ample room for further re-rating given memory price increases and surging demand driven by AI infrastructure expansion.
KB Securities raised its operating profit forecasts for SK Hynix to 270 trillion won for this year and 418 trillion won for next year. The revision reflects faster-than-expected price increases for DRAM and NAND flash, as well as exploding demand for server memory including high-bandwidth memory (HBM).
In particular, second-quarter operating profit this year is projected at 67 trillion won, nearly seven times the level a year earlier. Analysts see a high probability of an earnings surprise well above market expectations.
Securities analysts believe the memory upturn will not be a short-lived boom. With full-scale operation of new production lines not expected until after next year, demand for AI servers and enterprise SSDs is outpacing supply growth, potentially ushering in an era of effectively “zero memory supply.”
“Supply conditions in 2027 are likely to be even tighter than this year,” Kim said. “Memory price increases and earnings improvements will continue to outpace share price gains for some time.”
The fact that the AI market’s growth potential is still in its early stages is also cited as a positive factor. Beyond data center-centric server AI that currently leads the market, on-device AI and agentic AI—which judges and acts autonomously—are beginning to spread in earnest.
When the physical AI market, including humanoid robots and self-driving cars, opens up, demand for memory semiconductors is expected to grow even more explosively. KB Securities expects this market to enter a full-scale growth trajectory from 2028.
“AI so far has been merely a trailer,” Kim said. “The future AI market will expand beyond cloud-based server AI to on-device AI and physical AI, creating a much broader growth path.”
“In the future AI infrastructure, memory semiconductors are likely to be re-evaluated not as mere components but as core competitive assets that determine the performance of the entire AI system,” he added. “Considering the physical AI market with its high long-term growth potential, the main feature of AI has not even begun yet.”
Meanwhile, the previous day the Kospi continued its rally, breaking through the 7,900 level for the first time in early trading. The total market capitalization of the domestic stock market also surpassed 7,000 trillion won for the first time, as investor expectations for semiconductor and AI-related stocks continue to rise.
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