SK Hynix

SK Hynix is the cleanest HBM monopoly trade in the global equity market — Q1 26 printed revenue +198% YoY and operating margin at 72% with management explicitly guiding "HBM demand for the next 3 years far exceeds capacity," and the NVDA Rubin design win plus the HBM4E samples in H2 26 makes this the highest-conviction Layer-3 memory position in the cycle. SK Hynix is the global leader in High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) — the stacked DRAM that sits adjacent to every AI GPU and is the single binding constraint on every AI training cluster and inference fleet. The Icheon M14 and M16 fabs in South Korea, plus the Cheongju M15 fab, plus the dedicated HBM advanced-packaging lines that surround them, collectively produce roughly 50-55% of the world's HBM volume in 2026 — and the share at the leading HBM3e and HBM4 generations is closer to 60%. SK Hynix is the sole HBM3e supplier to NVIDIA Blackwell and Blackwell Ultra; the company is the lead-customer launch partner on HBM4 for NVIDIA Rubin shipping H2 26 into 2027.…