South Korea's top brokerage firm Mirae Asset: Lowers Hynix's target price to 2.8 million KRW, citing a recent sharp drop in stock price despite no significant deterioration in fundamentals

July 29th. South Korean semiconductor stocks followed a sharp pullback in global chip stocks, with SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics under pressure, and the KOSPI index experiencing intense selling. The market focus has shifted from "How strong is the AI demand" to "Can the valuation hold up and will capital expenditure pay off".

Against this backdrop, the large South Korean financial group Mirae Asset released a research report, lowering SK Hynix's target price from 4.2 million Korean won to 2.8 million Korean won, a 33% decrease, but maintaining a "Buy" rating. Based on the closing price of 1.55 million Korean won on July 28th, the new target price still represents approximately 80.6% upside potential.

Mirae Asset believes that this round of correction is more due to a downward shift in industry valuation benchmarks. Factors such as the domestication of mature process equipment in China, the listing of CXMT, and expectations of a NAND contract price reduction have temporarily dampened investor risk appetite. However, the report emphasizes that these variables have limited substantial impact on SK Hynix's future performance estimates.

On the fundamental side, Mirae Asset points out that Google Cloud orders backlog has risen from $46.8 billion to $51.4 billion, and the spot price of 16Gb DRAM has been rising for over 50 consecutive trading days, surpassing previous highs, indicating short-term support for memory prices. The firm expects SK Hynix's second-quarter operating profit to reach 6.23 trillion Korean won, a 65.7% increase from the previous quarter.

However, the market will be more discerning going forward. The report states that investors need to focus on the progress of long-term contract signings, whether storage supply will further tighten by 2027, the pace of HBM4 shipments, the implementation of MaaS business, and whether the company will enhance shareholder returns ahead of schedule.

Mirae Asset indicates that despite the recent significant decline in stock price, SK Hynix's profitability and financial stability remain strong. For the current market, the signal from this report is that the AI hardware chain is undergoing a valuation reassessment, but the cyclical prosperity and cash flow logic of the storage leader have not been broken.