Despite recording a record quarterly operating profit of 3.76 trillion won, SK Hynix's share price lost its upward momentum and showed signs of weakness. Although the stock reached a record high, renewing its all-time high for the first time in 52 weeks during the trading session, it immediately lost upward elasticity due to a surge in profit-taking sales, shifting to a slight gain. Experts suggest that considering the significant rise in shares of Micron, a peer in the same industry, on the New York Stock Market last night, the stock's upward momentum has slowed as the major catalyst of the earnings report has faded. However, some analysts maintain the view that the current stock price is still undervalued compared to future earnings expectations, emphasizing that investor sentiment has not completely frozen.
The stock closed up 2,000 won, or 1.225 million won, from the previous day, marking a solid performance. During the session, it surged to 1.267 million won, setting a new historical high. However, a subsequent downward turn caused the decline to widen to 3.27%, only to recover to a flat range just before the market close, showing a volatile trading flow. The fact that institutional investors and foreign investors sold stocks worth 14.62 billion won and 14.17 billion won respectively suggests that some disappointment regarding the earnings report may have negatively impacted investor sentiment. In particular, even though the earnings slightly exceeded the consensus estimate of 363.955 billion won provided by the securities industry, some institutions appear to have expressed disappointment due to high expectations of over 400 billion won.
Compared to Samsung Electronics, which recorded a provisional earnings of 570 billion won, significantly exceeding the consensus, before the earnings report, some perceive SK Hynix's earnings as falling short of market expectations. Nevertheless, the securities industry continues to praise SK Hynix, focusing on its 1-quarter operating profit margin of 71.5%. Lee Jong-wook, a researcher at Samsung Securities, emphasized that the semiconductor market's long-term boom is likely to continue until next year, and that the stock price will reflect additional growth as concrete evidence of the boom emerges. Samsung Securities raised its operating profit estimates for this year and next year to 228 trillion won and 284 trillion won, respectively, which is analyzed as a case of positively revising future prospects despite being lower than the 1-quarter earnings.
SK Hynix honestly admitted during a conference call that its plans to expand supply to cope with structurally increasing demand are insufficient for the time being. In a situation where the supply shortage is not easily resolved and there are no signs of demand decline, the lack of future supply expansion plans is seen as a major issue. Additionally, in terms of valuation, the company is evaluated as being at an attractive level, with a 12-month forward P/E ratio of 4.82, which is very low. This means that even the amount of net profit accumulated over 5 years does not reach the current market capitalization, demonstrating sufficient investment appeal. On the other hand, news of the delayed mass production of HBM3 by Chinese CXMT and strengthened export restrictions acted as factors stimulating investor sentiment across the entire sector.