BlockBeats News, August 9th. JPMorgan Chase believes that the market's concern over the decline in SK Hynix's stock price is excessive. With the early announcement of the shareholder return plan and the company's maintenance of HBM competitiveness, mid-term market sentiment is expected to improve. Key upcoming catalysts include: the shareholder return plan will be officially announced by the end of September 2026, and HBM contract price updates are also expected to be confirmed during the same period.

SK Hynix has moved up the announcement time of the shareholder return plan from "within the year" to the end of the third quarter. JPMorgan Chase expects that the company's cumulative free cash flow over the next 3 years will exceed 80 trillion Korean won, providing sufficient capacity for shareholder returns; considering gains such as the sale of the Kioxia stake, its shareholder return scale may exceed that of other global memory chip companies. The company also plans to invest approximately 54 trillion Korean won in infrastructure, including investing 35.2 trillion Korean won to build the Icheon Y2 DRAM fab and investing 19.1 trillion Korean won to build the Cheongju M17 NAND fab.

Regarding reports that SK Hynix's HBM4 is priced 50% lower than its competitors, JPMorgan Chase believes that such claims are not accurate and that the market's concerns are exaggerated. It is expected that SK Hynix's 2026 HBM prices will increase by less than 40% year-on-year, due to reasons such as the company's need to prioritize higher-margin products like DDR5, LPDDR5, and long-term NAND supply contracts, and manage its relationship with its largest customer, NVIDIA, from a perspective of years of cooperation and long-term procurement. As HBM is usually repriced annually and with the importance of short-term pricing diminishing after securing 3 to 5-year long-term contract orders, the importance of short-term pricing will also decrease.