SK Hynix’s stock has fallen nearly 50% since June.
Last Wednesday alone, it dropped another 9.75% as investors grew nervous about whether AI spending from big US tech companies can keep up its current pace.
What’s worth noticing is what happened right after that fall.
SK Hynix announced the largest share buyback in the history of South Korean listed companies.
$28.6 billion, committed to repurchasing and cancelling its own stock, with purchases starting the very next trading day.
That’s a fairly clear signal when a company backs its own stock with real cash rather than words, especially with the market this nervous.
SK Hynix has close to 69 trillion won in net cash sitting on its balance sheet.
It has essentially said the current price doesn’t reflect what the business is actually worth.
A buyback isn’t just a variant of a dividend. It behaves completely differently once tax comes into the picture.
A dividend is cash that lands in your account, and it’s taxed the moment it arrives, whether you wanted the payout that year or not. A buyback works differently. Nothing lands in your account.
Your shareholding stays exactly the same.
What changes is that the company now has fewer shares outstanding, so what you hold quietly becomes a slightly bigger piece of it.
That gain only gets taxed when you choose to sell, and at that point, it’s taxed as a capital gain rather than as income.
For an Indian investor holding a stock like this directly, that difference isn’t trivial.
It ends up deciding how much of the eventual recovery actually gets kept.
Here’s exactly how buybacks work when you’re investing globally: https://vstd.pro/4qEcaQ8