On January 29, 2021, a person walked previous the corporate’s brand within the foyer of SK hynix’s Bundang workplace in Seongnam.
Jung Yeon-je | AFP | Getty Pictures
SK Hynix, one of many world’s largest reminiscence chip makers, stated on Thursday that second-quarter revenue hit its highest degree in six years because it maintained its management in superior reminiscence chips important to synthetic intelligence computing.
This is how SK hynix’s second-quarter outcomes evaluate to the LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted primarily based on extra constant and correct analyst forecasts:
- earnings: 16.42 trillion received (roughly US$11.86 billion), in contrast with 16.4 trillion received
- working revenue: 5.47 trillion received vs 5.4 trillion received
June quarter working revenue hit its highest degree because the second quarter of 2018, rebounding from a 2.88 trillion received loss in the identical interval final yr.
Income from April to June elevated 124.7% from 7.3 trillion received a yr in the past. That is the very best quarterly income within the firm’s historical past, in keeping with LSEG knowledge courting again to 2009.
SK Hynix stated on Thursday that the general value of its reminiscence merchandise continued to rise resulting from robust demand for AI reminiscence, together with high-bandwidth reminiscence, leading to income progress of 32% from the earlier quarter.
The South Korean big provides corporations equivalent to Nvidia with high-bandwidth reminiscence chips that meet the wants of synthetic intelligence chipsets.
SK Hynix shares fell 7.81% on Thursday morning.
decline comes as South Korea Cospi Disappointing U.S. tech shares bought off in a single day, with index down 1.91% letter and Tesla earnings. The studies mark buyers’ first take a look at how giant corporations carried out within the second quarter.
“Robust demand for AI servers is predicted to proceed within the second half of this yr with the launch of AI-enabled PCs and cellular units, and conventional markets will step by step get well,” the corporate stated in an earnings name on Thursday.
Benefiting from the robust demand for synthetic intelligence, SK hynix plans to “proceed to take care of its main place within the HBM market by mass manufacturing of 12-layer HBM3E merchandise.”
The corporate will start mass manufacturing of the 12-layer HBM3E after offering samples to main clients this quarter, and is predicted to ship to clients within the fourth quarter.
Provide is tight
Reminiscence leaders equivalent to SK Hynix have been actively increasing HBM manufacturing capability to fulfill the rising demand for synthetic intelligence processors.
HBM requires extra wafer capability than typical dynamic random entry reminiscence merchandise, a kind of pc reminiscence used to retailer knowledge, which SK Hynix stated can also be dealing with provide constraints.
SK stated: “Funding demand can also be rising so as to meet the demand for conventional DRAM in addition to HBM. HBM requires extra wafer manufacturing capability than bizarre DRAM. Subsequently, the capital expenditure degree this yr is predicted to be increased than what we anticipated at the start of the yr.” Hynix .
“Whereas overcapacity is predicted to extend subsequent yr resulting from elevated industrial funding, a big a part of will probably be used to extend HBM manufacturing. Subsequently, the tight provide scenario of conventional DRAM is prone to proceed.”
SK Kim of Daiwa Capital Markets stated in a report on June 12 that they anticipate “tight provide of HBM and reminiscence to proceed till 2025 resulting from bottlenecks in HBM manufacturing.”
“As such, we anticipate the favorable value atmosphere to proceed and SK hynix to profit from its competitiveness in AI graphics processing unit HBM and AI server high-density enterprise SSD (eSSD) to report robust gross sales in 2024-25 earnings, thereby driving a re-rating of the inventory,” King stated.
As giant language fashions equivalent to ChatGPT drive the explosive adoption of synthetic intelligence, the availability of high-bandwidth reminiscence chips is already stretched skinny.
Analysts warn that the growth in synthetic intelligence is predicted to pressure the availability of high-end reminiscence chips this yr. SK Hynix and Micron stated in Could that they’d bought out of their high-bandwidth reminiscence chips for 2024 and that their 2025 inventories had been virtually bought out.
Giant language fashions require giant numbers of high-performance storage chips as a result of these chips enable the fashions to recollect particulars of previous conversations and person preferences so as to produce human-like responses.
SK Hynix dominates the high-bandwidth storage chip market and was the only real provider of Nvidia’s HBM3 chips till rival Samsung reportedly handed assessments for utilizing its HBM3 chips in Nvidia processors within the Chinese language market.
The corporate stated it expects to start delivery the next-generation 12-layer HBM4 within the second half of 2025.
