IBK Investment & Securities raises SK Hynix's target stock price to 1.8M won... AI memory demand acts as a catalyst

IBK Investment & Securities sharply raised SK Hynix’s target stock price from the previous 1.1 million won to 1.8 million won on the 15th, with market commentary suggesting that the spread of artificial intelligence demand is once again boosting memory semiconductor performance expectations. The securities firm not only reflects the demand for AI server memory, represented by high-bandwidth memory (HBM), but also anticipates an improvement in supply and demand in the general DRAM market.

IBK Investment & Securities maintained its buy recommendation for SK Hynix on the same day, forecasting that its first-quarter 2026 sales will increase by 51.9% quarter-over-quarter to 49.887 trillion won. This figure has been revised upward from previous estimates. Analyst Kim Yun-Ho stated that the earnings forecasts for DRAM and NAND have been significantly raised, mainly due to the higher-than-expected increase in the average selling price (ASP) of products. Specifically, DRAM sales are expected to grow 52.6% quarter-over-quarter, and NAND sales are projected to increase 51.4%.

Profitability expectations have also improved further. IBK Investment & Securities predicts that SK Hynix’s operating profit in the first quarter of 2026 will reach 38.46 trillion won, roughly double that of the previous quarter. The semiconductor industry’s characteristic structure—where profit can rapidly increase even with the same sales volume due to rising selling prices—also underpins this upward revision. Although memory semiconductors are highly affected by industry cycles, recent high-performance memory demand related to artificial intelligence is leading the overall market price trend.

This target price increase does not merely reflect short-term performance improvements. Analyst Kim expects that the growth of the AI-driven memory market will continue into 2026, and SK Hynix is likely to achieve differentiated performance in both DRAM and NAND sectors. He also believes this trend could last for quite some time and assesses that the current stock price is undervalued relative to its performance level. The target price is calculated based on an expected 2026 per-share net asset value (BPS) of 448,465 won, applying a 4.0x price-to-book ratio (PBR). The PBR indicates the ratio of a company’s net assets to its stock price and is commonly used by securities firms to estimate fair value.

Market participants believe that whether investments in AI servers will continue to expand, and whether the recovery in demand and supply shortages for general DRAM can actually translate into price increases, will be key variables determining whether SK Hynix’s stock price can further rise. While this trend may support overall investment sentiment in the memory industry in the short term, given the semiconductor industry’s inherent strong cyclical fluctuations, the extent to which actual performance can meet these expectations will serve as the basis for subsequent evaluations.