SK hynix posts record 83 trillion won quarterly operating profit on AI memory demand
SK hynix said third-quarter operating profit rose more than sevenfold to a record 83.33 trillion won ($62.8 billion) as HBM4 shipments ramped up, and it plans about 100 trillion won in shareholder returns for 2026.
South Korea's SK hynix, a key supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to Nvidia, reported a record third-quarter operating profit of 83.33 trillion won (about $62.8 billion) on Oct. 28, beating market forecasts as demand from AI data centers kept surging.
Operating profit rose 632% from a year earlier, topping the 76.96 trillion won consensus compiled by FnGuide, Korea JoongAng Daily reported. Revenue climbed 328% to 104.62 trillion won, above expectations of 98.23 trillion won. Compared with the previous quarter, revenue rose 31.9% and operating profit 37.6%, according to CNBC. Net profit of roughly 40 trillion won, however, fell well short of analyst estimates.
Shipments of the company's latest HBM4 chips got into full swing during the quarter, while sales of server DDR5 memory and data-center solid-state drives also grew. The average selling price of SK hynix's DRAM rose by a high-20% rate from the second quarter and NAND prices by a mid-20% rate, investingLive reported.
The company plans to return about 100 trillion won to shareholders in 2026, including more than 30 trillion won in cash dividends and more than 60 trillion won in share buybacks and cancellations, among them a newly approved 20 trillion won buyback. It expects global DRAM demand to grow by a mid-20% rate in 2027 and NAND demand by a high-teens rate.
The results underline how heavily AI infrastructure spending is flowing through to memory makers. At the same time, surging memory prices are adding to data-center costs for hyperscalers, and investors will be watching whether price gains of this size can hold into 2027 as new capacity comes online.
Sources: Korea JoongAng Daily, CNBC, investingLive. Image: Getty Images (via CNBC).
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