Bulletin: SK Hynix's Acquisition Of Intel's NAND Business Is Modestly Credit Positive

HONG KONG (S&P Global Ratings) Oct. 21, 2020--S&P Global Ratings today said that SK Hynix Inc.'s acquisition of Intel Corp.'s NAND memory chip business is modestly positive for the Korean memory chipmaker's creditworthiness. The deal will materially strengthen SK Hynix's competitiveness and scale in the NAND flash business. It will increase leverage in the acquirer, but not enough to breach our downside trigger. As such the rating on SK Hynix is unchanged (BBB-/Stable/--). In our view, the US$9 billion (Korean won [KRW] 10.3 trillion) acquisition could substantially strengthen SK Hynix's position in the NAND market, where its presence has been much weaker than in its DRAM business. The acquisition would allow SK Hynix to become the second largest player in

...October 21, 2020 HONG KONG (S&P Global Ratings) Oct. 21, 2020--S&P Global Ratings today said that SK Hynix Inc.'s acquisition of Intel Corp.'s NAND memory chip business is modestly positive for the Korean memory chipmaker's creditworthiness. The deal will materially strengthen SK Hynix's competitiveness and scale in the NAND flash business. It will increase leverage in the acquirer, but not enough to breach our downside trigger. As such the rating on SK Hynix is unchanged (###-/Stable/--). In our view, the US$9 billion (Korean won [KRW] 10.3 trillion) acquisition could substantially strengthen SK Hynix's position in the NAND market, where its presence has been much weaker than in its DRAM business. The acquisition would allow SK Hynix to become the second largest player in the NAND market following Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., surpassing Kioxia Holdings Corp. SK Hynix's combined market share would improve to more than 20%, from around 10%-12%. We believe the acquisition is in line with...

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