SK Hynix shares rally 13% after US tech firms signal strong AI spending plans

By Hyunjoo Jin

SEOUL, May 4 (Reuters) - Shares of SK Hynix 000660.KS surged 13% to a record high on Monday, driven by foreign buying, after some big U.S. tech firms last week hiked their investment plans for artificial intelligence data centres.

The South Korean chipmaker outperformed bigger rival Samsung Electronics 005930.KS, which has been weighed down by the risk of a potential strike by unionised workers demanding a bigger share of the company's AI-driven profits.

SK Hynix shares closed up 12.52% to a record high of 1,447,000 won ($985.29) per share, outstripping Samsung Electronics' 5.44% gain and the wider market's 5.1% rise.

The Bank of Korea's senior deputy governor Ryoo Sang-dai raised expectations that the current chip market boom would last longer than it did in previous cycles, echoing forecasts made by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix during their earnings conference calls last month.

All four of the U.S. tech giants including Alphabet GOOGL.O, which reported results on Wednesday, signalled that spending on AI would not slow down, with combined outlays set to surpass $700 billion this year, up from around $600 billion previously.

In particular, Microsoft MSFT.O and Meta META.O unveiled higher-than-expected capital expenditure plans for this year, partly because of surging memory chip prices, while expressing confidence in those investments.

"I think everybody knows that the cost of these components, particularly memory, has skyrocketed. We are just in a stage where there's just not enough capacity for the amount of demand," Amazon AMZN.O said on an earnings conference call last week.

($1 = 1,468.6000 won)