South Korea's SK Hynix plans to invest $75 billion on chips through 2028

By Yoolim Lee

SK Hynix Inc., the semiconductor arm of SK Group, plans to invest 103 trillion won ($74.8 billion) through 2028, underscoring the conglomerate’s bet on a sector it considers crucial for future-proofing its businesses. 
 

About 80 per cent, or 82 trillion won, will be allocated to investing in high-bandwidth memory chips, SK Group said in a statement on Sunday. SK Hynix’s HBM chips are optimised for use with Nvidia Corp.’s artificial intelligence accelerators. As part of its bet on AI, SK Telecom Co. and SK Broadband Co. will invest 3.4 trillion won on their data center business.

 

The plan comes after SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and about 20 top executives held annual strategy meetings to discuss the direction of South Korea’s second-biggest business group after Samsung. The executives held marathon discussions for 20 hours over the last two days and debated over ways to overhaul the group, whose businesses also include energy, chemicals and batteries.

The stakes are especially higher this year as Chey needs to find $1 billion for a divorce settlement. Speculators have been betting he’ll take steps to boost the conglomerate to pay his estranged wife.

The executives decided that SK Group will aim to generate 80 trillion won by 2026 from operations and business overhaul. The goals also includes securing 30 trillion won in free cash flow in three years to keep its debt-to-equity ratio below 100 per cent. 

The group, which lost 10 trillion won last year, expects to post a pretax profit of 22 trillion won this year, according to the statement. It will target to increase that to 40 trillion won in 2026.

While it’s the first time SK is disclosing its investment plans through 2028, SK Hynix has announced a slew of investment plans this year, including $3.87 billion to build an advanced packaging plant and research center for AI products in Indiana. At home, it’s spending $14.6 billion building a new memory chip complex and proceeding with other domestic investments including in the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster.