South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc posted record profit in the second quarter of this year, the company said yesterday, as strong demand for its memory chips used in PCs and servers drove up prices.
The Apple Inc supplier’s best-ever quarterly figures were boosted by growth in cloud-computing services and high-end PCs for gamers, which continue to create demand for its popular DRAM chips.
The firm’s net profit for the quarter ended last month leaped 763 percent from a year earlier to 2.47 trillion won (US$2.21 billion), while operating profit jumped 574 percent to 3.05 trillion won — both breaking company records.
SK Hynix is the world’s second-biggest maker of DRAM chips, after Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.
Shipments of the chips rose 3 percent from the previous quarter, with prices rising 11 percent, thanks to strong demand from the server sector, SK Hynix said in a statement.
Separately, demand for NAND flash memory chips used in smartphones and other mobile devices slowed due to “sluggish demand growth in smartphones,” SK Hynix said, adding that it expects performance to pick up in the second half of the year.
“The launch of new smartphones using high-capacity NAND flash memory chips will boost demand,” it said.
The firm said it would increase production of both DRAM and NAND chips in the second half to meet growing global demand for memory chips.
“We are planning partial expansions of our manufacturing facilities for both DRAM and NAND chips by the end of the year,” a company official said in a conference call.
“The market demand can only be met through new manufacturing plants,” the official said, adding that the company plans to speed up the construction of factories in Wuxi, China, and Cheongju, South Korea.
The firm’s overall sales jumped 70 percent from a year earlier to 6.69 trillion won, also a record high.
Despite the strong figures, SK Hynix shares were down 3.56 percent at the close on Seoul’s Korea Exchange, as investors locked in profit by using the robust results as an occasion to start selling.
SK Hynix is seeking to take over the semiconductor unit of troubled Japanese tech giant Toshiba Corp, with a consortium led by the firm reportedly offering to pay more than US$9 billion.
If the deal goes through, it could make SK Hynix the global No. 2 maker of NAND memory chips, up from fifth.
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