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On Thursday, SK Hynix, a prominent South Korean semiconductor manufacturer, reported first-quarter results that surpassed expectations for both revenue and operating profit. The company continues to see strong demand for its high bandwidth memory products, which are critical components in generative artificial intelligence chipsets.
The financial highlights from SK Hynix’s latest earnings report compared to LSEG SmartEstimates are as follows:
Revenue: 17.64 trillion won ($12.36 billion) vs. 17.26 trillion won
Operating profit: 7.44 trillion won vs. 6.62 trillion won
Year-over-year, revenue increased by approximately 42% during the March quarter, while operating profit experienced a remarkable year-on-year rise of 158%. However, when looking at the previous quarter, there was an 11% decrease in revenue and an 8% decline in operating profit from the peak achieved in December.
Despite its strong performance, the company cautioned investors about ongoing macroeconomic uncertainties, including tariff policies, which are anticipated to create fluctuations in demand during the latter half of the year.
SK Hynix stands out as a chief supplier of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), essential for PCs, workstations, and servers, where it stores both data and program code. In its earnings release, the company emphasized the significance of artificial intelligence in shaping demand within the memory sector, further solidifying SK Hynix’s leadership in this space.
The company projects that expenditure by major tech firms on AI will persist, driven by the growth of the ecosystem fueled by open-source AI models and sovereign AI initiatives, which are expected to heighten demand for memory products.
Benefiting from a surge in AI server needs, SK Hynix has established itself as a key supplier of high bandwidth memory (HBM) to major clients, including Nvidia, a front-runner in the AI field. Competing companies in this arena include Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics.
A recent report from Counterpoint Research revealed that SK Hynix secured 70% of the HBM market by revenue in the first quarter, a significant achievement that allowed the company to surpass Samsung in overall DRAM market share for the first time, capturing 36% of the global market compared to Samsung’s 34%.
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