Hanmi Semiconductor (042700 KS) — Korea's dominant HBM bonder maker and an AI infrastructure play, up ~180% YTD down from May's all-time high.

Short interest at 18% of float, up 25% on the year. Squeeze Risk maxed at 100, Crowded Score at 80 — heavily shorted with significant squeeze potential.

Hanmi has a large passive Long Interest (83%) which has increased more than short interest increase, resulting in a net longer position.

Hanmi Semiconductor manufactures TC (thermal compression) bonders — equipment that precisely bonds memory chips under high temperature and pressure during the High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) manufacturing process and holds a 71.2% global market share in that segment.

Other products include micro SAW equipment (Wafer Sawing), vision placement equipment, flip chip bonders, and inspection systems.

While not an AI company itself, Hanmi is a direct AI infrastructure play — its TC bonders are essential to producing the HBM memory that powers NVIDIA GPUs and other accelerators.

The company currently trades on the Seoul Stock Exchange with a market cap of $16B USD.

The stock is up approximately +180% YTD, having surged to an all-time high of ₩426K in May 2026 before pulling back to the current ~₩270K range.

Short interest started around 14% in early January and climbed steadily to ~18% by late May, suggesting bears have been increasingly pressing the short side throughout the year.

Notably, as the stock surged to its highs at the end of April, short interest also fell dramatically before shorts rebuilt their positions on the way back down.

Squeeze Risk is currently at 100 and Crowded Score is at 80. The squeeze score has been oscillating between ~25 and 100 and the crowded score has been steadily climbing.

On the long side, passive ownership has increased over the past year to 83% as shown in the graph. This increase in long passive is much bigger than the interest on the short side.

The CEO owns roughly 2/5 of the passive long, or 1/3 of the company, inherited from his father.

The analysts have turned bearish, consistent with the extreme returns and the rise in short interest. Sell recommendations and short interest are frequently correlated.

Bull Case: Hanmi is building next-generation chip-stacking tools for late 2026 and 2029 to power faster AI memory. Business is strong for now, highlighted by a recent massive 44 billion won ($32 million) order from SK Hynix.

Hanmi is also leading the race to build tools for a brand-new type of rapid AI storage.

Bear Case: However, SK Hynix is hiring a rival toolmaker to reduce its dependence on Hanmi, potentially cutting Hanmi's share of their business to just 20–30% by 2026.

Another major customer, Micron (MU), is also expected to switch to a competitor. Because Hanmi is losing exclusivity with these buyers, analysts are cautious.

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