SK Hynix announced on the 29th that its operating profit for the third quarter of this year was recorded at KRW 11.3834 trillion. This marks a 61.9% increase compared to the same period last year (KRW 7.0299 trillion), and it is the first time the quarterly operating profit has surpassed KRW 10 trillion.

During the same period, sales increased by 39.1% year-on-year to KRW 24.4489 trillion. Net profit rose by 119% to KRW 12.5975 trillion (net profit margin 52%).

SK Hynix achieved record-breaking quarterly results, surpassing the previous peak in the second quarter, as DRAM and NAND prices rose significantly and shipments of high-performance products for artificial intelligence (AI) servers increased.

SK Hynix stated, "The expansion of AI infrastructure investments by customers has led to a sharp increase in overall memory demand," adding that "the expansion of sales of high-value-added products such as the 5th generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM3E) 12-layer and server-oriented DDR5 has once again surpassed the highest performance recorded in the previous quarter."

Furthermore, "The demand for AI servers has increased, leading to a more than twofold increase in shipments of high-capacity DDR5 of 128GB or more compared to the previous quarter, and the proportion of enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs) for AI servers with price premiums has expanded in NAND," it emphasized.

SK Hynix anticipates that as the AI market rapidly shifts towards inference, there is a movement to distribute the computational load of AI servers across various infrastructures, including general servers, which will expand demand across the entire memory spectrum, including high-performance DDR5 and eSSD.

With major AI companies recently forming strategic partnerships and announcing plans to expand AI data centers, SK Hynix expects this to drive balanced demand growth across a range of products, including not only HBM but also memory for general servers.

In response, SK Hynix plans to accelerate the transition to the most advanced 10-nanometer class 6th generation (1c) process, which is being stably mass-produced, to expand supply of a 'full-line up' of DRAM products for servers, mobile, and graphics. In NAND, the company intends to increase the supply of triple-level cell (TLC) and quad-level cell (QLC) products based on the world's highest 321-layer structure to quickly meet customer demands.

SK Hynix announced that it has completed all negotiations with major customers for HBM supply next year. The HBM4, which completed development last month and established a mass production system, is prepared to meet all customer performance requirements and support the industry's highest speed. Shipments will begin in the fourth quarter, with plans to significantly expand sales next year.

Additionally, due to the rapidly increasing demand for AI memory, SK Hynix has secured all customer demand for DRAM and NAND products through next year.

To meet customer demand, SK Hynix plans to rapidly secure new production capacity through the M15X new plant in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, where it recently opened a cleanroom early and began bringing in equipment, accelerating the transition to advanced processes.

Accordingly, the investment scale for next year is planned to increase compared to this year, and SK Hynix stated it will maintain an optimized investment strategy in line with market conditions.

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