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SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc on Thursday reported its highest quarterly profit since 2018 as the Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) supplier forecast a further rise in demand for artificial intelligence chips in the second half of the year, such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in generative AI chips.
It was the third straight quarterly profit for the world’s second-largest memory chip maker after a steep loss last year. SK Hynix has benefited more than its peers from AI’s appetite for high-end chips and solid-state drives (SSDs) after its early entry and heavy investments in the sectors.
“The company will strengthen its position as a leader in AI memory products… based on a stable financial structure,” Kim Woo-hyun, the company’s chief financial officer, said in a statement.
The world’s second-largest memory chip maker reported an operating profit of 5.47 trillion won ($3.96 billion) in the April-June third quarter, compared with a loss of 2.9 trillion won a year earlier.
This was in line with expectations of 5.4 trillion won in operating profit from LSEG SmartEstimate, which has consistently skewed toward more accurate analysts.
Revenue surged 125 percent year-on-year to an all-time quarterly high of 16.4 trillion won.
(1 dollar = 1,380.3400 won)
