A signboard for SK Hynix’s booth at the China International Import Expo (CIIE) held in Shanghai, China on Thursday, November 6, 2025. The expo will be held until November 10th. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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South Korea’s SK Hynix posted record sales and profits for the quarter on Wednesday, boosted by soaring memory prices and demand for its generative AI chipsets, putting it in competition with rival Samsung to be the world’s top memory producer.
Below is a comparison of the company’s results with LSEG SmartEstimates, which emphasizes more consistently accurate analyst forecasts.
Revenue: 32,827 billion won ($23 billion) vs. expected 32,132 billion won Operating profit: 19,170 billion won vs. expected 17,729 billion won
Sales in the December quarter increased by about 66% year-on-year, and operating profit increased by 137%.
SK Hynix makes memory chips used to store data in everything from servers to consumer devices such as smartphones and laptops.
The company has benefited from the artificial intelligence boom as a leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM chips) used to power AI data center servers.
HBM falls under the broader category of dynamic random access memory (DRAM). DRAM is a type of semiconductor memory used to store data and program code used in PCs, workstations, and servers.
SK Hynix announced that HBM’s revenue will more than double in 2025. As a result, revenue for the same year increased by nearly 50% from 2024, reaching a record high of 97.147 trillion won. Meanwhile, annual operating profit reached 47.206 trillion won, more than double the previous year.
“We see SK Hynix as one of Asia’s biggest AI winners due to its leadership in HBM and strong competitiveness across memory,” said Ray Wang, an analyst specializing in memory and AI supply chain at Semianalysis.
“Beyond HBM, commodity DRAM will be a key revenue driver this year, supported by rapidly expanding margins and demand driven by structural undersupply,” he added.
Demand for HBM far exceeds supply, causing shortages across the memory sector, including less advanced memory chips used in consumer electronics and electric vehicles.
As a result of this environment, memory prices are soaring and the shortage is expected to continue into next year as companies such as SK Hynix wait for further capacity expansion to become practical.
SK Hynix also announced on Wednesday a plan to cancel 12.24 trillion won worth of treasury stock with the aim of increasing shareholder value. The announcement comes as the memory maker’s stock price soared on Tuesday after local media reported that the company had become the exclusive supplier of advanced memory chips for a new AI processor developed by Microsoft.
SK Hynix will hold a financial results briefing with investors on Thursday. Samsung, SK Hynix’s main competitor in the memory market, including HBM, is also scheduled to announce its financial results today.
