Micron has been up 726% over the past year and a significant part of that premium was scarcity. Micron was the only major US listed vehicle for investors who wanted direct exposure to HBM memory, the chip category that ai infrastructure runs on and if you managed a US equity fund and wanted ai memory exposure, Micron was the answer by default.
So on friday..
SK hynic listed on nasdaq at $149, opened at $170(up 14% on day one) and raised $26.5 billion which is now second largest ipo in history.
The market share numbers from sec filings are stark too ,sk hynix holds 56.4% of the global hbm market by revenue ,micron holds roughly 21% and samsung holds the rest. Sk hyrix tripled its sales from 2023 to 2025 at a 72% CAGR so this is the dominant hbm player and has been running the market while micron was the only name US investors could easily buy.
So there could be two cases,one is that hbm demand is so far ahead of supply that the market doesnt need to choose.Nvidia, amd, google and microsoft are all competing for memory that doesnt exist yet and the 2 us listed memory companies dont cannabalize
Other could be bear case for micron specifically is the scarcity premium is gone. Portfolio managers who want pure hbm exposure now have a more direct way to get it and only game in town narrative that justified micron's valuation premium over its korean peers no longer applies
Asml and Tsmc both report this week and if either guides cautiously on ai capex the entire memory thesis gets questioned simultaneously.Interesting timing that european retail also just got access to margin trading through bitpanda on US stocks for the first time this week, right as the most significant memory ipo in history lands.
Are you guyss holding MU into this week, switching to SKHY or trimming memory exposure entirely now that the scarcity narrative is gone?
Micron's entire bull narrative for the past year was only US listed AI memory stock now SK Hynix just listed on Friday
byu/AayushmaanThakur ininvesting
Posted by AayushmaanThakur
3 Comments
> entire bull narrative
“entire”.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I think you did a good job briefly proving that “hbm demand is so far ahead of supply that the market doesnt need to choose.” I think you’re correct here, however I don’t think you proved the other case that the “scarcity premium is gone”. I think any justification for the valuation premium still exists because the next two years of memory are already bought out, and there is a significant change that doesn’t change for years to come. Like any supply growth to meet demand, it will eventually meet demand, and then the scarcity premium is gone. We just don’t know how long that will be. 2 years? 5 years? Longer? We might not know until we know.
It doesn’t matter how many companies are listed, it’s the return on supply they’re after, not the exclusivity of the stock.
Ok ChatGPT
More important they will open fabs in USA