The final time SK Hynix Inc. (NASDAQ:SKHY) suffered a month-to-month decline this extreme, Lehman Brothers had just collapsed.
Shares of the South Korean reminiscence big have plunged roughly 41% this month, marking their worst month-to-month efficiency since October 2008.
The selloff accelerated Tuesday, with the inventory dropping one other 14% in Seoul simply sooner or later earlier than second-quarter earnings.
SK Hynix will report second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, after the shut.
Chart: SK Hynix Eyes Worst Monthly Performance Since October 2008
China Changed the Memory Narrative
The reminiscence commerce has grow to be much less about present income and extra about future provide.
The catalyst was ChangXin Memory Technologies‘ blockbuster Shanghai debut, which despatched shares hovering greater than 460% on the primary buying and selling day and reignited considerations that China may quickly increase DRAM manufacturing.
That risk triggered a broad selloff throughout world reminiscence shares, together with Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:MU), SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ:SNDK), SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. (OTC:SSNLF), as traders started pricing in a future normalization of reminiscence costs reasonably than in the present day’s file profitability.
Only days in the past, Wall Street seen reminiscence as certainly one of AI’s clearest winners.
Now the market is asking whether or not the business’s pricing energy is already peaking.
Read Also:EXCLUSIVE: China Is Coming For SanDisk—But Not Yet For Micron’s Memory Crown
All Eyes On Q2 Earnings
Yet fundamentals inform nearly the other story.
Wall Street expects SK Hynix to report second-quarter income of $55.7 billion and earnings per share of $4.79 on Wednesday.
That would characterize a 243% year-over-year enhance in income and a 604% surge in EPS, underscoring simply how a lot traders anticipate the AI-driven reminiscence increase to proceed.
Those forecasts indicate one other quarter of extraordinary development pushed by high-bandwidth reminiscence (HBM), the chips powering Nvidia’s AI accelerators.
For six consecutive quarters, SK Hynix has both met or comfortably exceeded Wall Street’s expectations.
The firm beat earnings estimates by almost 50% final quarter and income topped consensus by greater than $2.3 billion.
Since the beginning of 2025, earnings surprises have repeatedly ranged between roughly 20% and 65%, whereas income has missed estimates solely as soon as—and by a negligible quantity.
The market barely reacted after most of these experiences, suggesting traders had already priced in the excellent news.
