SK Hynix posts record quarter

SK Hynix reported its highest-ever quarterly operating profit after artificial intelligence demand pushed memory prices sharply higher. (news.skhynix.com) The South Korean chipmaker said first-quarter revenue reached 52.5763 trillion won and operating profit hit 37.6103 trillion won, with a 72% operating margin. Revenue topped 50 trillion won for the first time in a quarter, and net profit was 40.3459 trillion won. (news.skhynix.com) Reuters reported operating profit was up from 7.4 trillion won a year earlier and close to the 37.9 trillion won forecast in LSEG SmartEstimate. SK Hynix said profit also nearly doubled from the previous quarter, when operating profit was 19.1696 trillion won. (whbl.com, news.skhynix.com) The company makes memory chips, the parts that hold data while servers and devices work. Its fastest-growing products include high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, stacks that sit next to artificial intelligence processors and feed them data at high speed. (cnbc.com) SK Hynix said strong demand persisted even though the January-to-March period is usually a seasonal slowdown, because companies kept spending on AI infrastructure. The company said sales of HBM, high-capacity server dynamic random access memory modules, and enterprise solid-state drives drove the quarter. (news.skhynix.com) That demand is spilling beyond the most advanced chips into the broader memory market. Reuters, citing TrendForce, said contract prices for some dynamic random access memory products rose nearly 83% from the prior quarter, while some NAND flash prices rose about 160%. (whbl.com) SK Hynix said customer requests for HBM supply over the next three years already exceed its production capacity. Reuters reported the company plans to raise 2026 investment above last year’s 30.2 trillion won, with spending aimed at the Yongin cluster, the M15X fab, and equipment purchases. (whbl.com) The company said cash and cash equivalents rose by 19.4 trillion won from the previous quarter to 54.3 trillion won, while interest-bearing debt fell to 19.3 trillion won. That left SK Hynix with a net cash position of 35 trillion won as it prepares for heavier capital spending. (news.skhynix.com) SK Hynix said memory demand is widening as AI shifts from training large models to running real-time inference in more services, including what it called agentic AI. It said it expects favorable pricing for both dynamic random access memory and NAND flash to continue “for the time being.” (news.skhynix.com, whbl.com) For now, the company is selling into a market where customers are still trying to secure supply first and worry about price second. That is how a memory maker turned a seasonally weak quarter into a record one. (cnbc.com, news.skhynix.com)