SK Hynix Stock Rises as Intel Ohio Talks Reignite Memory Trade

Shares of SK Hynix Inc. (NASDAQ:SKHY) rose 3.5% to $181.00 in Thursday premarket trading, clawing back the entire advance the stock surrendered a day earlier as investors reconsidered a reported manufacturing tie-up with Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC). Intel added 3.1% to $104.18 before the bell, building on Wednesday’s 4.0% close at $101.05. Reuters reported Wednesday, citing three people familiar with the discussions, that SK Hynix is in early talks with Intel about manufacturing memory chips on U.S. soil for the first time. Two structures are under consideration: leasing part of Intel’s long-delayed Ohio chipmaking complex, or forming a joint venture with Intel and major cloud computing firms to lock in supply of increasingly scarce memory. Neither company confirmed a deal. SK Hynix said it is “exploring various options to strengthen its global competitiveness,” adding that nothing has been finalized. Intel declined to comment on what it called speculation, while restating its commitment to preparing the Ohio site. Intel’s Empty Campus Is The Asset In Question The Ohio project was announced as the world’s largest chipmaking complex and was due to begin fabrication in 2025. The two fabs have since slipped to 2030 and 2031, leaving billions in committed capital sitting idle. Intel Foundry, the division that manufactures chips for outside customers, has never had a capability problem. It has had a customer problem. A tenant filling Ohio capacity would turn idle plant into a revenue line, which matters because Intel trades at roughly 60 times expected earnings while still losing $11.29 billion over the past twelve months. That multiple assumes the foundry finds volume. Read Also: Freight Stocks Plummet as Record-High Diesel Squeezes Profit Margins: 7 Names To Watch For SK Hynix, It Is Insurance, Not Transformation SK Hynix already leads in high-bandwidth memory, the stacked chips that sit beside AI processors and feed them data. Revenue over the past 12 months is up 145% and net income up 461%. The stock trades at 8.9 times those earnings and 4.3 times expected earnings. It also has American capacity coming. SK Hynix is building a $4 billion plant in West Lafayette, Indiana, where high-bandwidth memory will be assembled, not fabricated. Fabricating it in the United States costs more, because labor, construction and local suppliers all add expense. Yet, Seoul can slow this down. Advanced memory can be classified in South Korea as national core technology, which triggers a government review of any transfer abroad. Micron Has The Most To Lose Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) is the only large memory maker headquartered in the United States, and federal CHIPS Act subsidies were built around that position. If SK Hynix fabricates memory on American soil, that domestic advantage narrows. Micron rose premarket anyway, alongside SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ:SNDK), extending a memory rebound that started Tuesday. The Group Is Ignoring The Fed That rebound followed a brief wobble, when AI developers Anthropic and OpenAI published safety warnings about their own systems and investors questioned the pace of data center spending. Chips are now rising a day after the Federal Reserve delivered its first interest rate increase since 2023 and signaled no cuts through 2027. Higher rates usually compress the value of distant profits. Memory pricing and AI spending are currently outweighing that. Read Also: Trump's New Trade War Brought an Unexpected Ally to Canada Photo: Shutterstock