Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group, said on the 10th (local time) that the semiconductor market has moved beyond a "cycle industry" and entered a "structural change." He meant it is no longer an industry where simple oversupply and shortages repeat as in the past.

In the morning on the 10th (local time), at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, USA, Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group, Kwak Noh-jung, SK hynix CEO, and Ko Seung-beom, SK hynix outside director and board chair, ring the bell to announce the start of Nasdaq ADR transaction trading. /Courtesy of Yonhap News

After attending the opening bell ceremony for SK hynix American depositary receipt (ADR) listing at the Nasdaq headquarters in New York on the morning of the day, the chairman met with Korean media and said this.

The chairman said, "A clear structural change has already taken place," and noted, "It has become clear that it no longer moves in the old pattern of oversupply cycles."

He added, "It is not that the cycle itself has completely disappeared," but explained, "Right now the gap between supply and demand is very large."

The chairman explained, "There is an enormous lead time to build semiconductor fabs and produce wafers, and there are many infrastructure bottlenecks, so the physical limits of supply are clear."

He also said that as AI technology becomes more sophisticated going forward, memory demand will inevitably continue trending upward for a considerable period.

The chairman pointed out, "AI now is only at the level of a 4- to 5-year-old child, and for this child to advance to a generation of artificial general intelligence (AGI) means that an unimaginable amount of data training and application operation will be required until then."

He added, "There will be a continuing revolution in various compression and storage technologies, but no matter what technology comes, there is no way to stop memory's growth trajectory."

The chairman also said that demand from big tech clients is exceeding expectations. He said he met clients in California the previous day and noted, "Every client agrees there will be an explosion in memory demand, and their requested volumes are far greater than we initially expected."

He went on, "We are trying to build fabs as fast as possible, but it is not easy to ramp up supply all at once."

On the possibility of a stock split for SK hynix shares, he said, "If there are more requests (from the market or shareholders), we will of course consider it."

Song Hyun-jong, president of SK hynix, who was present, also said of a stock split, "It is something we can consider."

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