South Korea's SK Hynix (000660.KS) on Thursday posted a record quarterly profit as the Nvidia (NVDA.O) supplier saw strong sales of advanced chips such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in generative artificial intelligence chipsets.
The quarterly operating profit of 8.1 trillion won ($5.64 billion) from the world's second-biggest memory chipmaker exceeded its bigger rival Samsung Electronics' (005930.KS) forecast December-quarter operating profit of 6.5 trillion won.
This is the first time that SK Hynix's quarterly operating profit beat Samsung's total operating profit, analysts said, as its rival lags in supplying high-end HBM chips to Nvidia.
"Demand of HBM and high-density server DRAM... will continue to increase as global big tech companies' investment in AI servers grows and AI inference technology gains importance," SK Hynix said in a statement.
The company said its HBM chips accounted for 40% of its total DRAM revenue in the fourth quarter. Overall, its revenue for the quarter rose 75% year-on-year to 19.8 trillion won.
SK Hynix's operating profit result was slightly above the 8 trillion won average forecast by LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward analysts who are more consistently accurate, and up from 346 billion won a year earlier.
SK Hynix has been increasingly outperforming rivals Samsung and U.S.-based Micron Technology (MU.O) in recent quarters, as it benefits the most from AI-driven appetite for high-end memory chips following its early entry and large investments in HBM chip development.
SK Hynix said it began supply of 12-layer HBM3E chips, the most advanced HBM model currently in mass production, to a customer in the fourth quarter.
The company's shares have jumped about 30% so far this year on bullish sentiment driven by its business discussions with Nvidia, outperforming Samsung, whose shares rose 2% over the same period.
SK Hynix's shares benefited on Tuesday from U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of private-sector investment of up to $500 billion to fund infrastructure for AI.
For the conventional memory chip market, customers are expected to reduce inventory of PCs and smartphones, SK Hynix said. "Sales of PCs and smartphones equipped with AI will expand and the market situation will pick up in the second half of the year," it added.
($1 = 1,435.1200 won)
