SK Hynix shares rose as much as 12% intraday on Thursday, helping lift South Korea’s KOSPI index 4.8% to a new year-to-date high, after Alphabet’s second-quarter results and higher capital spending guidance drew attention to demand across the AI memory supply chain.

Alphabet reported second-quarter revenue of $119.8 billion, above expectations. Its Cloud segment grew 82% year over year. The company also raised its full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance to $195 billion–$205 billion, compared with its previous range of $180 billion–$190 billion.

Alphabet CFO Anat Ashkenazi said the increase was driven by “an acceleration in the delivery of capacity to meet growing demand.” The guidance was closely watched by investors in SK Hynix, one of the world’s major suppliers of high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI servers and data centers. High-bandwidth memory is a key component in AI systems because it sits close to accelerators and helps move large amounts of data quickly during training and inference workloads.

SK Hynix’s U.S.-listed American depositary receipt, SKHY, was up about 5.89% in recent trading. The company’s Korean-listed shares, which trade under the ticker 000660, gained 4.86%.

The rally in SK Hynix was supported by more than Alphabet’s reported results and spending plans.

ADR Supply Becomes Constrained

The Korea Securities Depository confirmed that SK Hynix has reached the 2.5% cap on the total number of Korean-listed shares that may be converted into U.S.-traded ADRs. As a result, that conversion channel is now effectively closed.

A $26.5 billion ADR issuance on July 10, described as one of the largest U.S. share offerings on record, exhausted the limit. With the available supply of SKHY shares for U.S. investors now capped, the restricted supply has added to upward pressure on the ADR price. ADRs allow U.S. investors to trade foreign companies’ shares in U.S. markets, so limits on conversion can affect the balance between local shares and U.S.-listed receipts.

Large capital raises often weigh on a company’s shares. In this case, investors continued buying SK Hynix, which the source described as a sign of confidence in the company’s AI growth story.

Board Approves Cheongju Facility Investment

On July 22, SK Hynix’s board approved a ₩7.09 trillion investment in its advanced packaging facility in Cheongju. The decision strengthens the company’s capacity expansion plans ahead of its second-quarter earnings call, which is scheduled for July 29. Advanced packaging is an important part of AI chip production because it helps connect memory and processors in configurations needed for high-performance computing systems.

The facility approval gave investors another concrete data point on the company’s spending priorities before its results. SK Hynix’s CEO has previously said the memory shortage is expected to worsen in 2027, with demand outstripping supply beyond 2030.

The broader U.S. equity market did not reflect the same gains at the time of SK Hynix’s move. The S&P 500 was down 0.4%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 0.4%, and the Nasdaq was lower by 0.5%.

The combination of Alphabet’s higher capital expenditure guidance, constrained ADR supply, SK Hynix’s Cheongju facility approval, and the company’s upcoming earnings placed renewed focus on the chipmaker.

SK Hynix is scheduled to report second-quarter results on July 29.