Special Edition: SK Chairman Chey Tae-won on SK Hynix's US Debut

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**Ed Ludlow** (0:07)
Welcome to our Bloomberg Television and Radio audiences all around the world, SK Hynix, the biggest first time US share sale by a foreign company setting a record, and we are joined by SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won. Congratulations.

**Chey Tae-won** (0:22)
Oh, thank you, thank you, Ed.

**Ed Ludlow** (0:24)
I think a sensible place to start is why now you've been thinking about a US listing some time, but why put SK Hynix in front of US investors now?

**Chey Tae-won** (0:36)
Well, we've been waiting for that for a long, long time. And since I acquired that Hynix about 15 years ago, so this is one of our milestones. Well, we have to go to access to the US capital market.
So now, the dream comes true. So people asking why now, but well, this is kind of earliest moment, well, we can have.

**Ed Ludlow** (1:04)
The earliest moment possible.
$26.5 billion is a lot of money. But in the context of SK's commitment domestically in Korea and internationally, not so big. Can we expect multiple returns to ADRs? The sale of multiple rounds of ADRs?

**Chey Tae-won** (1:26)
Well, yes, I'm expect we can deliver those things too. So we try to expand that our ADR size, and also battery, that actually requires a better return. So once we have the better return, then there is more demand.
So first thing is that we have to keep the stock price stable, and hopefully in a long run, then we can have the upside potentials. And I see it at this moment. So this is AI era. So this AI era has actually spiked a lot of demand for the memory, so this is kind of time for us.

**Ed Ludlow** (2:11)
So is this something near term?
Did you with the leadership group and your CFO say, we will need to do this with regularity? Or you haven't discussed that yet?

**Chey Tae-won** (2:22)
Well, to tell you the truth, yeah, we've been discussing that one, but I cannot just say that in a detail yet.

**Ed Ludlow** (2:32)
I appreciate that, Chey Man Chey. The US listing gives SK a new source of equity capital.
But what about the broader US capital markets? Do we see SK Group, SK Hynix as well become an issuer of global bonds, global debt?

**Chey Tae-won** (2:50)
Well, that's possible, but I guess right now we have enough cash for SK Hynix. Some other company could be actually issuing another bond and access to the capital market.

**Ed Ludlow** (3:07)
Chairman Chey, bear with me. I'm gonna get this out for our audience around the world.
This is why we're all here, right? This, you can't even see it, tiny. HBM 4E, high bandwidth memory, 12 layers in this case.

**Chey Tae-won** (3:24)
Right.

**Ed Ludlow** (3:25)
The whole world knows about this.
How severe and how tight is the supply right now of HBM? And more importantly, how long is that gonna last? Do you have a year where you see the supply situation changing?

**Chey Tae-won** (3:43)
Well, if you really understand all the requirement and the condition for that HBM memory type, and you have to understand the AI side first. So people knows that the large language model.

**Ed Ludlow** (3:58)
Yes.

**Chey Tae-won** (3:59)
Yes. But that large language model is a very important thing. But I guess in the future, the more we're using that AI, and AI actually requires more...

**Ed Ludlow** (4:13)
The inference phase.

**Chey Tae-won** (4:15)
Yes. But I see that memory, the main is the KB caching. So, well, it generated a lot of KB caching.
Due to that, keeping the performance of the LLM, then you should have that large lump-sum volume of the KB caching. And you have to actually... There's this kind of memory in people that is the same thing. We store the memory in our brain, and AI needs those kinds of KB caching. That memory has to store somewhere. So, if you had a better size of the memory, then better performance.
It's a simple stat, and the memory cycle is turning to a different cycle. I shouldn't say that the cycle is a different momentum. So, in the back then, the old days, the memory chip demand actually depends on the number of people, number of the hardware set.

**Ed Ludlow** (5:22)
That was a consumer electronics story, in part.

**Chey Tae-won** (5:25)
Yes.

**Ed Ludlow** (5:26)
Boom and bust.

**Chey Tae-won** (5:27)
Mostly, well, you had your own smartphone, but you don't need tens of different types of smartphones. You only use one, like a PC.

**Ed Ludlow** (5:38)