SK Hynix (000660, Financial) reported a remarkable 158% increase in operating profit, driven by the global competition in artificial intelligence (AI) and strategic stockpiling ahead of potential U.S. tariffs on advanced chips and memory. Despite macroeconomic uncertainties potentially affecting demand in the latter half of the year, the South Korean company maintains its forecast for high bandwidth memory (HBM) demand to double by 2025, supported by supply agreements secured a year in advance.
In the first quarter, SK Hynix achieved an operating income of 7.44 trillion Korean won (approximately $5.2 billion), surpassing the expected 6.6 trillion won, marking a 42% growth. This performance is the company's second-best quarterly result, only behind the record-breaking previous quarter. The results highlight the substantial investments in global data centers and SK Hynix's leading position as a supplier of HBM required for NVIDIA accelerators used in AI training.
SK Hynix anticipates that sales of its 12-layer stacked HBM3E, a cornerstone of its AI memory strategy, will account for more than half of total HBM3E revenue in the second quarter.
