SK hynix approves a $28.6bn share buyback

SK hynix’s board approved a share buyback and cancellation programme worth 40 trillion won (roughly $28.6 billion), which the company said in its own announcement was the largest treasury-share cancellation ever carried out by a South Korean listed company. Execution was set to begin the following day, 20 August, and run for approximately three months.

The company said the decision reflected a view that its “intrinsic value — underpinned by business competitiveness, robust cash generation capability, and mid-to-long-term growth potential — is not fully reflected in its current stock price.” SK hynix cited a net cash position of roughly 69 trillion won as of the second quarter of 2026 as evidence of that cash-generation strength, and framed the buyback as an acceleration of a programme first announced in November 2024, which had targeted returning half of cumulative free cash flow over 2025–2027; the new target raises that to “over 50%.” Reports of the announcement said SK hynix shares jumped as much as 12% in trading the same day, against a closing price of 1,662,000 won the day before.

SK hynix is one of the principal suppliers of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to Nvidia and other AI-accelerator makers, and the buyback follows a period in which demand for HBM used in AI training and inference hardware has driven a sharp rise in the company’s cash generation. The move is one of the clearer corporate-finance signals of how the AI memory boom has flowed through to a major chip supplier’s balance sheet, translating capacity-constrained demand for a specialised component into one of the largest capital-return commitments made by a Korean company.