SK Hynix, first quarter operating profit of 2.8 trillion won earnings surprise… ‘Big cycle coming in the second half of the year’

NAND price rises due to AI chip boom

Sales amounted to 12.4 trillion… Highest ever in 1st quarter

SK Hynix revealed surprising performance that exceeded market expectations in the first quarter of this year. This is thanks to the rise in prices of memory semiconductors, the flagship product, amid the artificial intelligence (AI) craze. There is an analysis that the memory semiconductor market has entered a full-fledged big cycle after the worst cold wave last year.

SK Hynix announced on the 25th that it succeeded in turning a profit in the first quarter of this year with an operating profit of 2.886 trillion won from an operating loss of 3.4023 trillion won in the same period last year. This is the result of exceeding the market forecast of 1.8 trillion won and the highest performance since 2018 as of the first quarter. Sales reached KRW 12.4296 trillion, an increase of 144.3% compared to the same period last year, reaching the highest level in the first quarter.

SK Hynix suffered difficulties last year, recording losses for four consecutive quarters amid the semiconductor recession. However, after succeeding in turning a profit mainly from DRAM in the fourth quarter of last year, the atmosphere turned around by recording an ‘earnings surprise’ in the first quarter of this year. High-bandwidth memory (HBM), the world’s number one, led the performance rebound, and NAND flash, which had been slow to recover compared to DRAM, also achieved a surplus with its average price rising by 30%. SK Hynix predicted, “As demand for high-density NAND is increasing in the AI ​​market, the NAND surplus trend will continue in the second quarter.”

SK Hynix predicted in a conference call today that a memory big cycle will begin in the second half of this year. It was also decided to increase the amount of facility investment this year compared to the original plan. The plan to build a new DRAM line by investing 20 trillion won in the Cheongju plant has already been revealed. Kim Woo-hyun, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of SK Hynix, said, “This year’s investment scale is expected to increase somewhat compared to the plan at the beginning of the year in response to rapidly growing HBM demand and investment in M15X.”

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