SK Hynix posts 400% profit jump, revenue up 198% in blockbuster year

SK Hynix posted another huge quarter on Thursday, with profit rallying by more than 400% to $25.4 billion and revenue increasing by 198% to $35.55 billion.

The company’s revenue was a little below the 53.55 trillion won expected by LSEG, and operating profit also came in just under the 37.92 trillion won forecast.

The March quarter was the first time SK Hynix cleared 50 trillion won in revenue, as sales nearly tripled from the same period last year. Operating profit rose five times year over year and was almost double the last quarter, while operating margin hit a record 72%.

SK Hynix stock jumped as much as 3.6% in early South Korea trading before giving that up and trading down 0.9% later.

SK Hynix rides AI demand as memory prices keep climbing

SK Hynix said stronger memory prices and heavy spending on AI infrastructure drove the quarter. The company is the top supplier of HBM, or high-bandwidth memory, which is used in AI data centers.

In its earnings release, SK Hynix said, “Despite the fact that first quarter is typically a seasonal downturn, strong demand persisted due to expanded investments in AI infrastructure.”

SK Hynix also said demand should stay strong as artificial intelligence goes beyond training large models and into agentic AI, where systems handle repeated real-time inference across many services.

On the earnings call, an executive said, “The importance of memory has become greater than ever … as this supply-demand imbalance persists, customers are prioritizing procurement over price.”

HBM is part of the wider DRAM market. DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, is the type of memory used to store data and program code in PCs, workstations, and servers.

Counterpoint Research said the DRAM market logged 30% quarter-over-quarter growth for two straight periods as memory prices rose. Those higher prices came from strong HBM demand, which tightened factory capacity and added to a broader memory shortage in recent quarters.

That gave SK Hynix an advantage over Micron and Samsung Electronics in the DRAM business because SK Hynix got ahead early in HBM and became a key supplier to Nvidia, the leading maker of AI processors.

Still, Samsung took back the top spot in DRAM revenue in the last three months of 2025, based on Counterpoint data. Even with that, SK Hynix still led the HBM segment with a 57% market share. Samsung shares also hit a new intraday record of 227,000 won on Thursday.

SK Hynix is expanding supply plans, and battling wafer shortages

The race now is not just about sales. It is also about who can secure enough supply. Samsung said in February that it had started shipping its first HBM4 chips to unnamed customers. That came nearly a year after SK Hynix started delivering HBM4 samples.

HBM4 is the sixth generation of HBM and the most advanced version so far. It is expected to be the main AI memory chip used in Nvidia’s Vera Rubin architecture for heavy data center workloads.

SK Hynix said Thursday that it plans to start supplying samples of its seventh-generation HBM4E in the second half of the year, with mass production set for 2027. At the same time, supply limits are still a real problem.

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won reportedly said in March 2026 that the global chip wafer shortage could last until 2030 because HBM demand is still growing faster than supply. Chey also said it could take four to five years to expand wafer capacity, and the expected shortfall could top 20%.

To deal with that, SK Hynix is building more capacity. The company reportedly said on Wednesday that it plans to invest 19 trillion won in a new manufacturing plant in South Korea.

On the earnings call, SK Hynix said it had already spread sourcing across different suppliers for helium, bromine, and tungsten and built up enough inventory, so the effect on production should stay limited. SK Hynix also said long-term liquefied natural gas agreements should help contain higher energy costs.

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