SK Hynix is said to weigh 0.5% fee payout in mega ADR offering

Published Sat, Jul 4, 2026 · 04:15 PM

[SEOUL] SK Hynix is considering paying about 0.5 per cent of the proceeds from its US listing – one of the largest share sales ever – to banks working on the deal, according to people familiar with the matter.

While SK Hynix has indicated it will issue as much as 2.5 per cent of its total shares, the final deal size – which will determine the fee amount – is not yet set, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing non-public information.

SK Hynix may also choose to pay discretionary incentives on top of the base fee, they said. Deliberations are ongoing and details of the agreement may change, the people said. 

Based on the company’s latest market capitalisation of about US$1.1 trillion, the offering could raise about US$26.5 billion, which would translate to more than US$130 million in total fees at the 0.5 per cent payout rate. Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs Group and JPMorgan Chase are leading the share sale.

The fee percentage is small by US standards, where even large initial public offerings tend to pay more than 1 per cent, but it is still on course to be one of the top fee events for a deal involving an Asian company this year.

An SK Hynix spokesperson declined to comment on the matter when reached by phone.

The listing follows Elon Musk’s SpaceX raising US$86 billion in a record-smashing IPO and may challenge Saudi Aramco’s US$29.4 billion 2019 IPO for the second largest share sale.

The SK Hynix fee is expected to be smaller than the 0.67 per cent SpaceX paid out. In the Korean chipmaker’s offering, the job for bankers should be made easier by investor familiarity with a company that’s long been listed in its home country and has been one of the hottest names among global technology stocks this year.

One of the sources of uncertainty is the volatility of SK Hynix shares listed in Seoul. The stock has gone through wild gyrations this week, falling as much as 15 per cent on Thursday and rising up to 10 per cent on Friday, as South Korean stocks were rattled by doubts about the sustainability of the artificial intelligence buildout boom.

Even with a drop of 20 per cent from a June peak, SK Hynix is still up 770 per cent in 12 months.

The company has been a beneficiary of the hype around AI as investors bet that demand for memory and storage will be a long-term growth story. SK Hynix is the top supplier of high-bandwidth memory after becoming the go-to provider for Nvidia, the dominant maker of AI processors. 

In the past, Asian companies listing in the US have paid higher fees than they might have at home. Alibaba Group, which raised US$25 billion in its 2014 IPO, spent US$300 million on underwriters, including performance fees. BLOOMBERG