The SK Hynix Inc. logo will appear on the glass doors of its office in Seoul, South Korea on Monday, January 27th, 2014. SK Hynix has selected the US site for advanced chip packaging plants and is aiming for a breakground around the first quarter of next year.
Seongjoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
South Korea Sk Hynix On Thursday, in the second quarter, it recorded record operating profit and revenue in relation to sustained demand for high-bandwidth memory technology used in the generated AI chipset.
SK Hynix’s second quarter results compared to LSEG SmartEStimates are weighted to more consistently accurate predictions from analysts.
Revenue: 22.23 trillion won ($1.617 billion) vs. 20.56 trillion operating profit: 9.21 trillion won vs. 9 trillion won
Revenue for the June quarter rose above 35%, up compared to the same period last year, but operating profit rose nearly 69% year-on-year.
Each quarter, revenues increased 26% and operating profit increased 24%.
The company said in a statement that it enjoyed strong demand and favorable pricing conditions during the first half of the year. SK Hynix added that a sudden demand correction is unlikely for the remainder of 2025 due to stable customer inventory levels and expected demand due to new product launches.
SK Hynix is a leading supplier of dynamic random access memory. This is a type of semiconductor memory that is commonly found in PCs, workstations and servers used to store data and program code.
Many of the company’s recent successes have been credited to its business in high-bandwidth memory or HBM, the type of DRAM used in artificial intelligence computing.
“The demand for AI memory continues to grow,” said Song Hyun-Jong, president and head of SK Hynix’s corporate centre, in a revenue call.
The company expects the investment will continue to drive healthy demand growth in the server market despite macro uncertainty. Demand for general-purpose servers is also expected to grow.
According to Song, further development of AI agents with enhanced inference models requires higher performance memory. Song added that the surge in AI in the PC and smartphone markets will further increase demand.
“In addition, continued investment by governments and businesses to solve AI is likely to be a new long-term driver for AI memory demand,” Song said.
SK Hynix has established itself as a global leader in HBM, providing clients such as the US AI Darling Nvidia. The company plans to double its HBM sales over the year compared to 2024, donating 77% to second quarter revenue.
The company said it expects capital expenditures to increase in 2025 as “active investments” are required to ensure support for HBM’s customers in 2026.
According to CounterPoint Research, SK Hynix’s success at HBM in the first quarter was the first to overtake rival Samsung Electronics in the global DRAM market.
A Counterpoint Research report earlier this month estimated that SK Hynix linked Samsung’s DRAM and NAND revenue in the second quarter, both of which took the top position in the global memory market. NAND is a type of flash memory commonly used in storage devices.
Samsung and US. Micron Technology, a memory manufacturer based in HBM Space, aims to catch up with SK Hynix. However, analysts hope that SK Hynix’s control will last in the short term.
“At the moment, I think SK Hynix still has leadership in HBM races… despite Samsung and Micron’s catch-up efforts.”
“We hope that this edge will continue for the rest of 2025 and expand through 2026,” he added.
