Jim Cramer's cryptic comments on key AI supplier turn heads
I have been watching Cramer's social media feed long enough to know that when he posts something cryptic about a stock that is actively selling off, he is doing something deliberate. That’s how Jim sends his signals out loud. Monday morning, July 13, with SK Hynix (SKHY) dropping as much as 15% ...
Overview
I have been watching Cramer's social media feed long enough to know that when he posts something cryptic about a stock that is actively selling off, he is doing something deliberate. That’s how Jim sends his signals out loud.
Monday morning, July 13, with SK Hynix (SKHY) dropping as much as 15% before partially recovering to close down 9.32% at $152.35, according to Yahoo Finance, Cramer posted two messages on X (formerly Twitter) that immediately caught my attention.
"SK Hynix very kind to American investors with its pricing and its trading."
Then, minutes later, Cramer added this other one.
Walking SK Hynix back up, the American version.
The first comment is actually a buy signal dressed in understatement. The second is Cramer telling us that he is actively accumulating the dip.
What makes these posts worth paying attention to is the context behind them. Why? The company he is defending just completed one of the most extraordinary debuts in U.S. stock market history.
What SK Hynix is and why American investors should know this company
SK Hynix is South Korea's second-largest company by market cap, trailing only Samsung, according to Companies Market Cap. On top of that, it is the world's leading supplier of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). These vertically stacked DRAM chips sit inside every NvidiaAI processor currently powering the global Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure buildout.
HBM is not a commodity. It is one of the most technically demanding products in semiconductor manufacturing, and SK Hynix holds roughly 60% global market share in it, according to Leverage Shares.
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SK Hynix reports that UBS predicts it will achieve approximately a 70% market share in the HBM4 market for NVIDIA’s next-generation Rubin platform in 2026.
Its customers include Nvidia and Apple. Its chairman told CNBC on Friday, July 10th, that when he announced plans to double capacity within five years, customers told him it still was not enough.
"All my customers said, 'Well, that's not enough, man, we need more,'" Chey Tae-won said on the debut-day broadcast.
That demand backdrop is the foundation beneath everything that happened last week.
The historic debut and why the July 13 selloff deserves context
The Motley Fool report shows that SK Hynix completed the largest U.S. share sale ever by a foreign company on July 10, raising $26.5 billion through American depositary receipts priced at $149.
Details
In fact, that eclipses Alibaba's $21.77 billion 2014 IPO to become the biggest foreign listing in U.S. history, according to the BBC. SK Hynix surged 13% on day one, closing at $168.01.
Related: Major tech IPOs fetch mixed results — remember that as SpaceX, OpenAI listings loom
Then came Monday, July 13. Memory stocks dropped broadly after a South Korean brokerage report suggested SK Hynix might not meet its quarterly profit estimates. The jitters spread across the sector, dragging Micron, Seagate, and SanDisk lower alongside SKHY.
My read of that selloff is that it is classic post-IPO noise amplified by a single analyst report in the home market. The underlying business is not in question based on one brokerage note.
What is in question is whether the stock ran too far too fast in three trading days, and whether short-term profit-takers are using any negative headlines as an exit. Cramer's "walking it back up" language is his explicit pushback on that framing.
The financial reality behind the stock — SK Hynix's Q1 2026 results
The earnings foundation Cramer is defending is genuinely extraordinary.
- Revenue of KRW 52.58 trillion, approximately $35.5 billion, up 198% year over year and 60% sequentially.
- Operating profit reached KRW 37.61 trillion, approximately $24.9 billion, representing a 72% operating margin.
- EBITDA came in at KRW 41.3 trillion, for a 79% EBITDA margin.
- Net income grew 398% year over year to approximately $27.3 billion.
- DRAM contract prices jumped 83%, and NAND flash prices surged 160% quarter over quarter during the same period, according to MLQ.ai data.
Source: SK Hynix First Quarter Results
Those NAND pricing dynamics are the direct result of the supply shortage that Micron and SanDisk have also been citing in their own earnings commentary throughout 2026.
Chairman Tae-won was explicit about the demand environment on CNBC.
"The demand is enormous, exponentially, so I don't really see signs that HBM demand is shrinking," he said during the debut day broadcast.
The mega-investment plan that tells you where SK Hynix is headed
The scale of SK Hynix's forward commitment is staggering and worth including in any analysis of the stock's long-term potential.
Backed by the South Korean government's $576 billion technology initiative, SK Hynix has unveiled a KRW 1,100 trillion investment plan, equivalent to more than $800 billion, targeting semiconductor manufacturing hubs in Yongin, Cheongju, and the southwestern region of Korea, according to Forbes.
That plan is heavily concentrated on HBM expansion to serve Nvidia and next-generation AI systems.
Related: Memory stocks are still “early innings” — here’s the ETF to invest in
Honestly, a company that generated $24.9 billion in operating profit in a single quarter, commands 50%-plus global HBM market share, and is backed by one of the largest government semiconductor investments in history does not fit neatly into the category of "might miss quarterly profit estimates."
Cramer's characterization of SK Hynix as "very kind to American investors" is his way of saying what the data suggests directly: this is a world-class semiconductor business now available to American retail investors for the first time, and a 9% single-day drop driven by a South Korean brokerage report is the market offering that offers access at a discount, which I second.
Related: SK Hynix's Nasdaq debut could be the market's next stress test
Source
Originally published at www.thestreet.com.
