SEOUL, October 28 (AJP) - SK hynix cemented its dominance in the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) market crucial to powering artificial intelligence chips, reporting a fresh record quarterly operating profit of 83.33 trillion won ($62.9 billion) on Wednesday amid growing jitters over the sustainability of AI spending and memory demand.
The South Korean memory chipmaker posted revenue of 104.62 trillion won for the July–September period, up 327.9 percent from a year earlier and 31.9 percent from the previous quarter, delivering a staggering operating margin of 79.7 percent.
Operating profit surged 632.1 percent from a year earlier and 37.6 percent from the previous quarter.
For the first nine months of the year, cumulative operating profit reached 181.49 trillion won on revenue of 236.51 trillion won.
The results beat the FnGuide market consensus of 76.96 trillion won in operating profit on revenue of 98.23 trillion won, implying an operating margin of about 78.3 percent.
SK hynix has been riding surging demand for HBM chips used in Nvidia's AI accelerators that power hyperscalers and data centers. The HBM pioneer, which commands more than half the global market, has faced intensifying competition from domestic rival Samsung Electronics as the industry transitions to HBM4.
On Wall Street, its American depositary receipts (ADRs), which debuted in July, traded at $145.36 on Tuesday, up 1.9 percent ahead of the earnings release.
SK hynix shares have lost 25 percent this month amid concerns over excessive AI spending and have more than halved from their June peak of 2,987,000 won. The shares closed down nearly 8 percent at 1,374,000 won on Tuesday ahead of the earnings release.
Investors are awaiting signals of additional shareholder payouts during the earnings conference call following the company's completion of a 40 trillion won share buyback on Oct. 21 and its pledge to return more than half of cumulative free cash flow for 2025–2027 to shareholders.
A possible distribution of gains from its investment in Japanese chipmaker Kioxia also remains under consideration.
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