Home > Business > Industry

SK Hynix marks 35% rise in operating profits

SK Hynix regained more than 1 trillion won ($962 million) in quarterly operating profit for the first time in two quarters, the company said yesterday.

The world’s second-largest memory chipmaker posted a 1.057 trillion won operating profit in the first quarter that ended in March, up 35 percent from the fourth quarter of last year, the quarterly earning report from the Icheon, Gyeonggi-based company showed.

It tallied 785 billion won in operating profit in the fourth quarter last year, down 33 percent compared with 1,164 billion won in the third, due largely to a disruption in production at its Wuxi plant in China after a fire on Sept. 4.

Its revenue stood at 3.743 trillion won in the first quarter, 11 percent more than in the fourth quarter. Its net profit was 802 billion won in the first quarter, a 2 percent increase.

The company’s stock price gained 0.4 percent yesterday.

SK Hynix, which provides chips to Apple and Sony, said its shipment of DRAM chips grew 20 percent from the fourth quarter. Kim Joon-ho, president of SK Hynix, said in a conference call that its DRAM shipments will increase 10 percent in the second quarter.

The global DRAM market became a three-way competition between Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron Technology of the U.S. after Elpida Memory of Japan filed for bankruptcy in early 2012, meaning the supply of DRAM will not likely increase as much as the demand.

For NAND Flash, used mainly for mobile devices, SK Hynix’s average sales price dropped 14 percent from the fourth quarter due to a lower demand for mobile devices. SK Hynix’s shipment of NAND Flash dropped 8 percent from the fourth quarter.

Lee said the company will increase the shipment of NAND flash in the second quarter by 40 percent from the first quarter, predicting the demand for mobile devices will recover in the coming months.

BY MOON GWANG-LIP [joe@joongang.co.kr]