SK hynix Q4 net up 87.5 pct on rising chip demand

SK hynix Inc., South Korea’s No. 2 chipmaker, on Friday reported strong fourth-quarter earnings, helped by solid memory chip demand for servers and smartphones.

Net profit for the three months that ended in December leaped 87.5 percent from a year earlier to 3.31 trillion won (US$2.8 billion).

Operating profit rose 340 percent to 4.21 trillion won, the highest since the fourth quarter of 2018.

Sales jumped 55.4 percent to a quarterly record of 12.37 trillion won, marking the third consecutive quarter that the company logged more than 10 trillion won in sales.

SK hynix, the world’s second-largest DRAM supplier, benefited from a surge in enterprise demand for metaverse-capable servers among global IT companies and from solid seasonal demand for memory chips used in mobile and consumer electronics products.

The resurgence of the coronavirus with the arrival of the omicron variant in the fourth quarter seemed to have slowed down a decrease in demand for such IT products.

For 2021, the company achieved an all-time high revenue of 42.9 trillion won, up 34.8 percent from the previous year.

The previous sales record was 40.4 trillion won reported in 2018.

Operating profit for 2021 was 12.4 trillion won, up 147.6 percent from a year earlier, the highest in three years.