SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won speaks at the San Francisco AI Summit held at The Midway in San Francisco on July 24 (local time), with President Lee Jae-myung in attendance. [Yonhap]
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won speaks at the San Francisco AI Summit held at The Midway in San Francisco on July 24 (local time), with President Lee Jae-myung in attendance. [Yonhap]

Shares of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix surged more than 20 percent in early trading Friday as investor sentiment toward the semiconductor sector staged a sharp recovery.

The rally came after chip stocks rebounded strongly on Wall Street on Thursday, with robust earnings from both companies providing additional support as they clawed back a steep recent decline.

As of 10:04 a.m. on the Kospi, Samsung Electronics was up 25.12 percent at 259,000 won ($180), while SK Hynix had climbed 28.90 percent to 1.7 million won.

Volatility interruption mechanisms were triggered for both stocks immediately after the opening bell, after which they continued to advance by more than 20 percent.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics and SK Square hit their daily upper limit as the two chip giants surged.

The rebound in chip stocks on Wall Street on Thursday helped revive investor appetite. Semiconductor shares at home and abroad had slowed amid concerns that AI chip valuations had peaked.

Sentiment shifted after Microsoft posted blowout earnings that beat market expectations and said it would maintain its capital expenditure outlook for this year at the previous level, easing investor anxiety.

Microsoft's share price surged 15.51 percent overnight, adding $450 billion to its market capitalization in a single session — the largest single-day market cap gain for any stock listed on a US exchange in history, according to Reuters.

SanDisk and AMD rose 25.99 percent and 13.00 percent, respectively, while Intel gained 11.30 percent. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which tracks 30 major chip stocks listed in the United States, jumped 8.19 percent overnight.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix both showed strong upward momentum in early trading Friday.

Over the three trading sessions from Tuesday through Thursday, Samsung Electronics had fallen 19.34 percent and SK Hynix had dropped 29.9 percent.

SK Hynix drew additional momentum from Thursday's disclosure that SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won had purchased 4.8 billion won worth of common shares — 1,620 shares — on the open market, as well as news that the company's American depositary receipts had surged 17.52 percent overnight on Wall Street.

Strong earnings from both companies also underpinned the rally. Samsung Electronics announced Thursday that it posted a record operating profit of more than 89 trillion won in the second quarter (April–June), driven by its memory chip business — surpassing the all-time quarterly operating profit records of Nvidia and Apple to set a new high for any technology company.

SK Hynix, which reported its results on Wednesday, posted second-quarter operating profit of 60.54 trillion won, a 557 percent increase from the same period a year earlier and also a record high.

"Microsoft, one of the hyperscalers, delivered better-than-expected earnings with a 15.51 percent gain, confirming that the monetization of AI investment is proceeding powerfully on a company-by-company basis," said Kim Seok-hwan, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities. "This eased concerns about a weakening AI infrastructure expansion narrative and led gains among companies tied to AI infrastructure investment, with semiconductors at the center."


jiyun@heraldcorp.com