IANS | 25 Apr, 2024
SK hynix said on Thursday it swung to a profit in the first quarter
of this year on the back of rising global demand for premium memory chip
products used for artificial intelligence (AI) computing.
The
world's second-largest memory chipmaker posted an operating profit of
2.88 trillion won ($2.09 billion) for the January-March period, compared
with a loss of 3.4 trillion won a year ago, the company said in a
regulatory filing.
It is the second-highest quarterly operating profit, following the records of the first quarter of 2018.
Its net profit came to 1.91 trillion won, turning from a loss of 2.58 trillion won a year earlier.
Sales shot up 144.3 per cent to 12.42 trillion won, marking a record high for a first quarter.
The
earnings beat market expectations. The average estimate of net profit
by analysts stood at 1.53 trillion won, according to a survey by Yonhap
Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency.
SK hynix
attributed the larger-than-expected first-quarter performance to robust
sales of its premium products for artificial intelligence, including
high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips and a rebound in demand for NAND flash
memory chips.
"An increase in the sales of AI server products
backed by its leadership in AI memory technology, including HBM, and
continued efforts to prioritize profitability led to a 734 percent
on-quarter jump in the operating profit," the company said in a
statement.
SK hynix expects the memory chip market will experience
steady growth in the coming months as demand for AI memory continues to
rise and the market for the conventional DRAM starts to recover from
the second half.
Moreover, inventories both at suppliers and
customers are forecast to decrease thanks to rising production of
premium products such as HBM and relatively decreasing supply of
conventional DRAMs.
SK hynix said it will increase supply volume
of HBM3E products, the up-to-date HBM that was mass produced in March
for the first time in the industry, and expand its customer base.
It
also plans to introduce 32 gigabits DDR5 products based on the 1bnm
process, the fifth generation of the 10nm technology, within this year
to strengthen its leadership in the high-capacity server DRAM market.