As generative AI services become visible, demand for HBM for AI servers is rapidly increasing, and SK Hynix is enjoying the highest stock price. Accordingly, recent performance has also been reported to have recorded the highest ever, proving the status of domestic semiconductor memory.

SK Hynix held a performance conference on the 25th and announced on the 25th that it recorded business performance of KRW 12.4296 trillion in sales, KRW 2.886 trillion in operating profit (operating profit margin of 23%), and KRW 1.917 trillion in net profit (net profit margin of 15%) in the first quarter of this year.

This sales figure is the highest sales that SK Hynix has achieved in the first quarter since its founding, and operating profit is said to be the second highest figure since 2018, which was the peak of the first quarter. SK Hynix is reported to have emerged from its long-term downturn and entered a full-fledged performance turnaround trend.

SK Hynix emphasized, “Based on our leadership in AI memory technology such as HBM, we increased sales of AI server products while continuing to focus on profitability, resulting in a 734% increase in operating profit compared to the previous quarter.” It added, “NAND also succeeded in turning a profit, with an increased sales portion of premium eSSD products and an increase in the average selling price (ASP), which is very significant.”

Recently, demand for AI memory has been continuously increasing, and demand for general DRAM has also been recovering from the second half of the year, so the memory market is expected to continue its stable growth this year.

As production increases, focusing on premium products such as HBM that require more capacity than general DRAM, the supply of general DRAM has relatively decreased. As a result, the industry predicts that inventory held by suppliers and customers will be depleted.

SK Hynix decided to increase the supply of HBM3E, which began mass production for the first time in the world in March, and expand its customer base in line with the growing demand for AI memory. In addition, the company plans to strengthen its leadership in the high-capacity server DRAM market, where it has maintained its strength, by launching a 32Gb DDR5 product based on 10nm 5th generation (1b) within the year.

SK Hynix announced that it plans to pursue product optimization to continue the performance improvement trend for NAND. The company will actively increase sales of its subsidiary Solidigme's QLC-based high-capacity eSSDs along with its high-performance 16-channel eSSDs, in which it has strong competitiveness, and respond to market demand with an optimized product lineup by timely launching PCIe 5th generation cSSDs for AI-oriented PCs.

In addition, as announced on the 24th, SK Hynix decided to make timely investments to expand capacity, such as by selecting the new fab, Cheongju M15X, as a DRAM production base and accelerating construction. The company also plans to proceed with future investments without a hitch in the mid- to long-term, such as the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster and the Indiana Advanced Packaging Plant in the US.

As a result, this year’s investment scale is expected to increase somewhat compared to the plan at the beginning of the year. SK Hynix explained that it decided to expand investment in line with the increasing trend of customer demand, and through this, it will appropriately increase the supply of not only HBM but also general DRAM in line with market demand. In the process, SK Hynix expects that while the global memory market will grow steadily, it will also be able to secure investment efficiency and financial soundness at the company level.

SK Hynix Vice President (CFO) Woo-Hyun Kim said, “Based on our global No. 1 AI memory technology centered on HBM, our company has begun to rebound in earnest,” and “We will continue to improve our performance by supplying the highest performance products in a timely manner and focusing on profitability as our management policy.”