A SK Hynix flag (R) and a South Korean national flag (L) flutter outside the company’s Bundang office in Seongnam on Jan. 26, 2024.
Jung Yeon-je | Afp | Getty Images
South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix posted yet another quarter of record profit and revenue on Thursday, as prices for its products continue to surge amid strong AI demand. While its earnings were broadly in line with estimates, revenue missed forecasts.
Here are SK Hynix’s first-quarter results versus LSEG smart estimates, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:
- Revenue: 52.58 trillion won ($35.55 billion) vs. 53.55 trillion won
- Operating profit: 37.61 trillion won vs. 37.92 trillion won
Revenue in the March quarter nearly tripled from the same period last year, surpassing 50 trillion won for the first time.
Operating profit rose fivefold year over year and nearly doubled from the previous quarter, while operating margin also reached an all-time high of 72%.
The company’s shares rose as much as 3.6% in early trading in South Korea before paring gains to trade down 0.9%.
SK hynix makes memory chips used to store data in devices ranging from servers to smartphones and laptops.
The company attributed its record earnings to rising memory prices and booming artificial intelligence demand. SK Hynix is the world’s leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, used in AI data centers.
“[D]espite the fact that first quarter is typically a seasonal downturn, strong demand persisted due to expanded investments in AI infrastructure,” the company said in its earnings release.
The company added that as artificial intelligence evolves from large-scale model training to agentic AI, which repeatedly performs real-time inference across various service environments, demand for memory is expected to continue growing.
“The importance of memory has become greater than ever … as this supply-demand imbalance persists, customers are prioritizing procurement over price,” an SK Hynix executive said in an earnings call on Thursday.
SK Hynix’s HBM technology falls into the broader category of dynamic random access memory or DRAM — a type of semiconductor memory used to store data and program code that can be found in PCs, workstations and servers.
DRAM market duel
According to data from Counterpoint Research, the DRAM market has recorded 30% quarter-over-quarter growth for two consecutive periods, driven by rising memory prices.
Rising memory prices have been fueled by surging demand for HBM, which has constrained manufacturing capacity and contributed to a broader memory shortage in recent quarters.
SK Hynix has gained an edge over rivals like Micron and Samsung Electronics in the DRAM market, thanks to its early lead in HBM and its role as a key supplier to the world’s leading AI processor maker Nvidia.
However, Samsung reclaimed the top spot in DRAM revenue from SK Hynix in the last three months of 2025, according to Counterpoint, though SK Hynix continued to dominate HBM with a 57% market share. Shares of Samsung hit a new intraday record of 227,000 on Thursday.
Samsung announced in February that it had started shipping its first HBM4 chips to unnamed customers, nearly a year after SK Hynix first began delivering its HBM4 samples.
HBM4 is the sixth generation of HBM technology and the most advanced version to date. It is expected to be the main AI memory chip used in Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin architecture, designed for powerful AI workloads in data centers.
SK Hynix said on Thursday that it plans to start supplying samples of its seventh-generation HBM4E in the second half of the year, with mass production targeted for 2027.
Capacity constraints
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won reportedly stated in March 2026 that the global chip wafer shortage is likely to persist until 2030, as demand for HBM continues to outpace supply and strain manufacturing capacity.
He added that expanding wafer capacity could take at least four to five years, with a projected shortfall exceeding 20%.
SK Hynix has been actively expanding its production capacity to meet rising demand. The company on Wednesday reportedly announced plans to invest 19 trillion won in a new manufacturing plant in South Korea.
MS Hwang, a research analyst at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC that first-quarter results from memory companies “show strong profitability and reveal that a lot more memory is needed for AI inference than expected, with companies rushing to secure supply.”
Even if memory price gains slow in the second half of the year, SK Hynix’s profits could continue to rise, he added.
However, the company could face some headwinds if the conflict in the Middle East extends beyond the second quarter and becomes prolonged, further disrupting the supply of essential materials for semiconductor manufacturing.
Such a scenario could have a critical impact on the entire AI supply chain, Hwang said, although it is not expected to become a long-term issue.
In the earnings call, SK Hynix said it has diversified suppliers for key industrial inputs such as helium, bromine, and tungsten and has built up sufficient inventory, with limited impact expected on its production.
The company added that long-term liquefied natural gas agreements should help mitigate potential increases in energy costs.
