SK Hynix posts record quarterly profit on AI demand
SK Hynix said on Wednesday that its quarterly operating profit more than doubled to a record high, comfortably beating market forecasts as relentless demand for artificial intelligence continued to lift prices for both advanced and conventional memory chips.
The South Korean chipmaker, a key supplier to Nvidia, posted a 137 percent jump in operating profit to 19.2 trillion won ($13.5 billion) for the fourth quarter, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
This compares with 8.1 trillion won in the same period a year earlier and exceeded the 17.7 trillion won consensus forecast from LSEG SmartEstimate, which gives greater weight to analysts with stronger track records.
SK Hynix said it will hold a briefing on its fourth-quarter earnings results on Thursday.
The company has built a strong competitive edge in high bandwidth memory (HBM), a critical component used in artificial intelligence chipsets designed by companies such as Nvidia. SK Hynix currently commands about 61 percent of the global HBM market, according to Macquarie Equity Research.
Beyond HBM, the chipmaker is also benefiting from tight supply conditions and rising AI-driven demand that are pushing up prices for commodity DRAM and NAND memory chips. These chips are widely used in servers, personal computers, and mobile devices.
As an example of the pricing momentum, contract prices for 16-gigabyte DDR5 — a popular type of DRAM chip — more than quadrupled in the most recent quarter compared with a year earlier, according to market tracker TrendForce.
TrendForce expects conventional DRAM contract prices to rise by a further 55 to 60 percent in the current quarter compared with the previous one, underscoring the strength of demand and continued supply constraints in the memory market.
By Nijat Babayev
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