Hanwha Asset Management's 'PLUS Global HBM Semiconductor' ETF crosses 1 trillion won mark

Hanwha Asset Management announced Sunday that its PLUS Global HBM Semiconductor exchange-traded fund has surpassed 1 trillion won (about $665 million) in net assets. According to Korea Exchange, the ETF crossed the 1 trillion won threshold at the close of trading on Friday. The fund roughly doubled in size in about three weeks, after breaking through the 500 billion won mark in early May.

The PLUS Global HBM Semiconductor ETF concentrates about 84 percent of its portfolio in leading domestic and international memory chipmakers, with Micron at 30.1 percent, SK Hynix at 28.2 percent, Samsung Electronics at 21.6 percent and SanDisk at 4.2 percent. The fund has returned 76.1 percent over the past three months, 219.8 percent over six months, 579.6 percent over one year and 172.6 percent since the start of the year.

The company attributes the strong performance to a shift in how memory chipmakers are perceived by the market. As the AI rally — previously driven by graphics processing units — moves into memory chips, these companies are being revalued not as cyclical stocks but as structural growth plays tied to the expansion of AI infrastructure. UBS recently raised its price target for Micron nearly threefold, from $535 to $1,625. Barclays lifted its Micron target from $675 to $1,175 and its SanDisk target from $1,200 to $2,300.

The ETF recently added SanDisk through a regular portfolio rebalancing, increasing its exposure to NAND flash memory. The fund also added memory testing and back-end equipment stocks such as Teradyne and Techwing, positioning it to benefit from the broader expansion in memory capital investment.

"In the current environment, where AI inference is spreading and memory chip prices are jumping by double digits every quarter, the key performance differentiator is how much exposure a fund has to front-end names that capture cycle margins first," said Geum Jeong-seop, head of the ETF business division at Hanwha Asset Management.