SK hynix Sinks 9% as Qualcomm’s 26% Handset Plunge Deepens Memory Chip Rout

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SK hynix shares fell 9% after Qualcomm reported a 26% drop in handset chip sales as memory costs push phone prices up. Conventional DRAM, the kind phones use, drove SK hynix’s 2026 price gains. Apple’s record iPhone quarter shows the high end holding up. Contracts covering over half of SK hynix’s 2027-2028 capacity soften the risk, and the selloff looks overdone. SK hynix ( SKHY ) fell 9% today after Qualcomm ( QCOM ) reported that its handset chip sales dropped 26% to $5.14 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 27. That’s a problem for every memory maker selling into phones. But Apple ( AAPL ) reported a September-quarter record for the iPhone on Monday. Qualcomm said in its fourth-quarter release that chip costs are rising, memory included, and that it’s raising its own prices to match. Qualcomm expects a flat handset market in 2027. (Apple’s in-house modems explain part of that 26% drop.) For SK hynix, those memory prices lifted its gross margin from 57.4% in the quarter to September 2025 to 85.7% a year later. Management credited its DRAM price gains in the first half of 2026 to conventional DRAM, the chips phones and PCs use. So phone demand feeds the prices behind analysts’ forecasts, which have earnings per share more than doubling from 2026 to 2028: At Micron Technology ( MU ) , the Mobile and Client unit brought in $13.1 billion of its $54.2 billion of revenue in the quarter ended Sept. 3, at an 88% operating margin. Micron reports in mid-December, and that margin will show us whether phone makers are buying less. Apple’s iPhone sales rose 17% to $57.6 billion in its quarter ended Sept. 26, and its inventories more than doubled from a year earlier, to $14.5 billion. My read: it stocked up before memory prices climbed further. But Tim Cook, then CEO, said in July that the benefit of that cheaper stock would shrink after the September quarter. TIKR tracks 41 analysts on SK hynix. How many say “Buy”? See the full breakdown of Buy, Hold, and Sell ratings on SK hynix, along with Wall Street’s revenue and earnings estimates, all in one place. More than 500,000 investors use TIKR to research stocks like this one. See SK hynix’s Analyst Ratings SK hynix traded at 2.9x forward earnings at Wednesday’s close, near the bottom of its range since July’s US listing, and today’s drop takes it even lower: That’s with contracts from 14 customers covering over half of its planned 2027-2028 capacity. The catch is that it still sets most of its prices monthly or quarterly, where weaker phone demand would show up first. Qualcomm’s quarter is a fair warning for 2028, while 2027 looks largely spoken for. At under 3x earnings, investors are already braced for a far steeper fall than a flat phone market, so the selloff looks overdone to me. Of course, if SK hynix’s 2027 HBM price terms disappoint with its fourth-quarter results in late January, I’d rethink that. TIKR lets you forecast the future price of any stock in less than a minute. Just enter a few assumptions into TIKR’s valuation model and see what SK hynix could be worth. Start from Wall Street consensus estimates, or adjust the inputs to reflect your own view of the business. It’s free to use. Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!

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