By Heekyong Yang and Kenneth Li
SEOUL/NEW YORK, July 10 (Reuters) - SK Hynix Chief Executive Kwak Noh-jung said the global memory industry is heading for its worst-ever supply shortage in 2027, forecasting that demand for memory will continue to exceed the company's ability to produce it well into the next decade despite aggressive capacity expansion.
"We forecast that next year will be the worst year in the industry's history from the supply perspective," Kwak told Reuters in an interview on Friday,
the day the South Korean memory chipmaker began trading on the Nasdaq.
"Our customer demand continues to go up, while our capacity has limitations," he said. "We still forecast that customer demand will remain higher than our supply capacity even beyond 2030. But we are doing our best to solve the problem."
Kwak's comments follow a stellar debut for the South Korean chipmaker which has become a pivotal company in the AI supply chain by taking the lead in the development of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in Nvidia chipsets.
Shares of SK Hynix were up 14.8% at $170.94 on the Nasdaq on Friday afternoon.
U.S. WAFER FAB UNDER CONSIDERATION
Kwak also said the United States remains one of several candidates for future wafer fabrication investment, although no decision has been made.
He said the company would prioritize locations that can provide sufficient land, electricity, water and skilled workers at competitive manufacturing costs.
"If those conditions are met, the U.S., Japan and Southeast Asia are all under consideration," Kwak said. "Nothing has been decided yet. We are evaluating which location can provide the greatest business advantage."
SK Hynix's main factories are in Icheon, where it is headquartered, and Cheongju, and it is also building a sprawling facility in the city of Yongin.
Both SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics are participating in a plan by the South Korean government to double the country's memory chip production capacity within five years. That includes investment of 400 trillion won ($266 billion) each for chip production facilities in the southwest of the country.
The plan has rattled some investors, however, who worry it could expose the firms to greater risk should a downturn occur.
In the U.S., it is investing around $4 billion to build an advanced chip packaging factory in Indiana. It is also investing $10 billion to develop an AI solutions company in the U.S., aiming to find new AI growth engines.
AI DEMAND UNDER SCRUTINY
There is some speculation that the AI investment cycle is approaching a turning point, which has been responsible for the recent drag on chip shares.
Concerns have mounted following reports that Apple is seeking to diversify parts of its semiconductor supply chain to include Chinese suppliers, and that Meta is looking to commercialize excess AI computing capacity.
Industry analysts, however, argue that memory supply continues to lag demand.
Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said last month that shortages of AI memory would continue for several years due to strong demand, adding that SK Hynix would remain the company's largest memory supplier.
UBS likewise expects the global DRAM industry to remain undersupplied until at least the second quarter of 2028.
SURGE IN PROFITS AND SHARES
SK Hynix has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom, thanks to its big bets on HBM, once scorned but now seen as canny. Operating profit hit a record 47 trillion won ($31 billion) in 2025, double what it made the year before and coming back from an operating loss in 2023.
The current quarter is likely to be even more eye-popping, with an LSEG SmartEstimate putting operating income at 65.5 trillion won.
The company's shares have also soared.
While concerns about the sustainability of the AI share rally have resulted in an 18% slide for SK Hynix shares in the past two weeks, they are up more than sevenfold over the past 12 months.
(Reporting by Heekyong Yang in Seoul; Additional reporting by Johann M Cherian and Ragini Mathur in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs, Kenneth Li and Matthew Lewis)
