SK hynix's Reports Record Q2 Profit
SK hynix saw its second-quarter net profit surge 75.4 percent from a year earlier Thursday, setting a new quarterly record amid the strong shipments of both dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and NAND flash products.
Net profit reached a record high of 4.3 trillion won (US$3.84 billion) in the April-June period, compared with 2.4 trillion won posted a year earlier, SK hynix said in a regulatory filing.
Operating profit moved up 82.7 percent over the cited period to 5.5 trillion won, SK hynix added. Sales also jumped a whopping 55 percent to 10.3 trillion won.
The chipmaker attributed the robust performance to the worldwide boom in the chip industry, with shipments of DRAM and NAND flash products rising sharply over the April-June period.
By segments, SK hynix said the shipment of DRAM chips jumped 16 percent on-quarter on the back of the strong demands from PCs and servers. Due to the shortage of supply in the market, the company said the average sales price of its products rose 4 percent.
The shipment of NAND flash also rose 19 percent on-quarter over the cited period, especially amid the strong demand from China, which sought larger-capacity products for mobile devices. Amid the increase of supply, however, SK hynix said the average price fell 9 percent.
For the second half of 2018, SK hynix said the demand for products related to servers will increase amid the rising investment made by data-center companies in the United States and China.
The seasonal demand for mobile devices, including the release of new smartphones, will also lend support to related products, it added.
"The goal is to consistently expand the portion of 10-nanometers mainly in the sales of server and mobile DRAM, which are expected to have strong demand growth," the company said. "The company also plans to stretch its cutting-edge 72-Layer 3D NAND and make efforts to smoothly supply high density mobile solutions and enterprise SSDs."
SK hynix added the construction of a clean room in Cheongju will be completed by September this year, with the new fabrication plant set to start production starting early next year. The expansion of the clean room in Wuxi will be completed by the end of 2018, it added.