South Korea’s Kospi surged 6.6% on Wednesday as stronger-than-expected earnings and a substantial shareholder payout from SK Hynix reignited investor appetite for artificial intelligence stocks.
SK Hynix climbed 11%, while Samsung Electronics jumped 9%. The rally has extended to U.S. premarket trading, where Micron Technology (MU) and SanDisk (SNDK) both gained 4%.
The gains build on a recovery in the AI sector over the past few days, following weeks of pressure as investors questioned the AI infrastructure buildout.
SK Hynix reported September-quarter operating profit of 83.3 trillion won ($62.5 billion), a sevenfold increase that exceeded analyst forecasts by more than 7%, Bloomberg reported.
The memory chipmaker also announced plans to return another 60 trillion won ($45 billion), through buybacks and dividends during the remainder of the fiscal year.
SK Hynix said conventional and high-bandwidth memory capacity is sold out through…
