South Korea SK Hynixone among the world's largest memory chip makers, reported record quarterly profit on Thursday, driven by strong demand for its high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which is utilized in generative AI.
Here are SK Hynix's third-quarter results in comparison with LSEG SmartEstimate, which relies on analyst forecasts which might be consistently more accurate:
- Revenue: 17.57 trillion won (US$12.7 billion) versus 18.11 trillion won
- Operating profit: 7.03 trillion won (US$5.08 billion) versus 6.8 trillion won
Operating profit hit its highest level within the July-September quarter, recovering from a lack of 1.8 trillion won within the 12 months same period last 12 months.
Quarterly revenue rose about 94% year-on-year to 9.1 trillion won.
The South Korean chip giant is a key supplier to Nvidia and is benefiting from the boom in servers with artificial intelligence.
SK Hynix said in his Results publication On Thursday, the corporate said demand for AI storage, particularly from data center customers, remained strong within the third quarter, allowing the corporate to extend sales of premium products comparable to HBM.
HBM is a sort of dynamic random access memory, often known as DRAM, by which chips are stacked vertically to save lots of space and reduce power consumption. DRAM is often utilized in laptops, workstations and PCs. SK Hynix, Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics are the three largest manufacturers of HBM chips.
Sales of HBM products also increased by greater than 70% in comparison with the previous quarter and greater than thrice in comparison with the identical period last 12 months, with the corporate expecting further growth.
“While the storage requirements for AI servers like HBM and [high-density enterprise SSD] “Grown significantly this year, the company expects this trend to continue next year,” the corporate said in an announcement Press release. Enterprise SSD is a knowledge storage device for servers.
Generative AI continues to advance and major technology firms are investing in developing the technology that supports demand, the corporate said.
SK Hynix also predicted that memory demand within the PC and mobile consumer products markets, which has been slower to get well from a downturn, shall be on a gentle growth path next 12 months amid the emergence of AI-optimized devices.
“As the application of AI technology expands, the application of storage is also expected to increase, which will lead to even more stable storage market growth in the future,” Kim Woohyun, vp and chief financial officer at SK Hynix, said in a conference call to the outcomes.
In 2023, the memory market experienced a pointy downturn brought on by oversupply, weak end-market demand, and geopolitical tensions Fitch Ratings.
The company announced this last month It has began mass production its latest version of HBM chips and is aiming for delivery by the top of the 12 months.
When markets opened in South Korea on Thursday, shares of SK Hynix initially fell 0.4% but then recovered to rise 1.3%.
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