SK Hynix suffered its steepest daily loss on record, falling more than 15 percent in Seoul on Monday, just days after raising $26.51 billion in the largest share sale by a non-U.S. company. The sell-off triggered a 20-minute market-wide trading halt as the Kospi index shed 9 percent, with Samsung Electronics also dropping close to 11 percent amid concerns that memory chip stocks might have peaked.
The rout followed a strong debut on Nasdaq last Friday, where the chipmaker's American depositary receipts opened roughly 14 percent above the $149 offer price and closed the first session up 12.8 percent. By Monday's pre-market, however, ADRs had already slid more than 9 percent, and overseas investors pulled roughly $1.1 billion from Kospi-listed shares. SK Hynix's total market value slipped to $875 billion by the close.
The company, which held a 58 percent revenue share of the high-bandwidth memory market in the first quarter and counts Nvidia and Google among its customers, had drawn intense investor interest before the listing. The sharp reversal dragged the broader Kospi lower alongside its flagship stock.