The SK Hynix logo appears on a mobile phone screen in this illustrated photo taken on January 30, 2023 in Krakow, Poland.
Jakub Porzycki | Null Photo | Getty Images
Korean SK HynixThe company, one of the world’s largest memory chip makers, posted its best quarterly profit on Thursday, driven by strong demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in generative AI.
Below is SK Hynix’s third quarter performance compared to the LSEG SmartEstimate, which emphasizes more consistently accurate analyst forecasts.
- Revenue: 17.57 trillion won ($12.7 billion) vs. 18.11 trillion won
- Operating profit: 7.3 trillion won ($5.08 billion) vs. 6.8 trillion won
Operating profit for the July-September period hit its highest level, recovering from a loss of 1.8 trillion won in the previous period. same time last year.
Quarterly sales were 9.1 trillion won, an increase of about 94% year-on-year.
The South Korean semiconductor giant is a major supplier to Nvidia and has benefited from the boom in artificial intelligence servers.
SK Hynix stated in it. earnings release On Thursday, the company announced that demand for AI memory, particularly from data center customers, remained strong in the third quarter, allowing it to grow sales of premium products such as HBM.
HBM is a type of dynamic random access memory, also known as DRAM, whose chips are stacked vertically to save space and reduce power consumption.. DRAM is commonly used in laptops, workstations, and PCs. SK Hynix, Micron Technology, and Samsung Electronics are the three major manufacturers of HBM chips.
HBM product sales are also up more than 70% quarter-over-quarter and more than three times year-over-year, and the company expects continued growth.
“HBM and [high-density enterprise SSD] “This year has seen significant growth, and the company expects this trend to continue next year,” the company said. press release. Enterprise SSD is a data storage device for servers.
The company says generative AI continues to evolve and major tech companies are investing in developing the technology to support demand.
SK Hynix also predicted that memory demand from the PC and mobile consumer products markets, which have been slow to recover from the downturn, will be on a steady growth trajectory next year due to the emergence of AI-optimized devices. .
Kim Woo-hyun, vice president and chief financial officer of SK Hynix, said at the financial results conference, “As the application of AI technology expands, the application of memory is also expected to expand, and the memory market will continue to grow steadily in the future. Probably.”
According to , in 2023, the memory market experienced a severe downturn due to oversupply, weak end-market demand, and geopolitical tensions. Fitch rating.
The company announced last month that Mass production has started We have released the latest version of our HBM chip and aim to deliver it by the end of the year.
SK Hynix stock initially fell 0.4% when the market opened in South Korea on Thursday, but has since recovered to rise 1.3%.
