Kwak explained that SK hynix halted its Solidigm IPO review because current financial market conditions made proceeding suboptimal.

“The IPO was intended to raise external capital for the expansion of Solidigm’s production facilities, and thereby to lighten our own investment burden and broaden our capacity for shareholder returns,” CEO Kwak said. “However, after carefully considering recent financial market conditions and other factors, we concluded that proceeding at this time would not be the best way to achieve the originally anticipated outcome. We have therefore discontinued our review.”

Kwak committed to sharing most gains from strategic investments such as Kioxia with shareholders while continuing bold investment.

“Our principle has been to share the majority of the gains from successful strategic investments with our shareholders. These gains help replenish our capacity for shareholder returns, which may temporarily decline as we prepare for the future, allowing us to continue investing boldly in sustainable growth while protecting shareholder interests,” he continued.

Kwak says SK hynix's business environment is structurally changing, with customer trust turning into long-term agreements that improve demand visibility and profit sustainability.

Now we have delivered record results for 6 consecutive quarters. But what we find more significant is that the underlying business environment is changing. The customer trust that we have built through our technological leadership is translating into long-term agreements, giving us greater medium- to long-term demand visibility and a stronger foundation for sustained profitability.

Kwak announced Solidigm is abandoning IPO plans due to market volatility and will keep pursuing AI data center storage growth.

Solidigm has concluded that an IPO would not fully deliver the anticipated benefits at this time and has, therefore, decided to discontinue its review of potential pre-IPO and IPO options. Solidigm will continue to strengthen its competitiveness and pursue growth opportunities in the AI data center storage market.

Kwak committed to returning Kioxia investment gains to shareholders via a special dividend.

We have upheld the principle of sharing the majority of the returns from our strategic investments with our shareholders. In line with this principle, we intend to return the gains realized from our investment in Kioxia this year to our shareholders through a special dividend.