By Kwanwoo Jun


SK Hynix led a rally in South Korean semiconductor stocks Thursday after U.S. chip-making peer Micron Technology's surprise earnings beat overnight reaffirmed that the artificial-intelligence boom is a serious earnings driver.

Shares of the South Korean memory-chip maker rose as much as 8.5% to 169,800 won ($127.60), on track for their sharpest daily gain in almost eight months, outperforming the benchmark Kospi's 2.1% gain.

The rally in SK Hynix followed Micron shares' 18% surge in Wednesday's extended trading after the company swung to a surprise quarterly profit, beating street views. Micron said it benefited from robust chip-price increases, partly fueled strong AI server demand.

Both SK Hynix and Micron supply the high bandwidth memory product, an advanced DRAM chip used in powerful computing, to AI chip giant Nvidia and others globally.

As shown in Micron's quarterly results, AI-driven industry growth remains fast and strong for higher-end chip products, Seoul-based DAOL Investment & Securities analyst Y.M. Ko said in a research note Thursday. He maintains SK Hynix as his most preferred stock in the Korean chip sector.

Ko said he expects prices for the HBM product to continue to rise on a quarterly basis throughout 2024.

Meanwhile, Daiwa Capital analysts S.K. Kim and Hyunmok Wang raised their 2024 forecast for SK Hynix's earnings per share by 41% in a research note earlier this week, citing higher memory-chip prices and bigger contributions from premium HBM3E products.


Write to Kwanwoo Jun at kwanwoo.jun@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

03-21-24 0027ET