SK hynix reported today revenues of 10.98 trillion won, operating profit of 1.66 trillion won (with OP margin of 15%), and net income of 1.1 trillion won (with net income margin 10%) in the third quarter of 2022. Sales and operating profits decreased 20.5%, 60.5% respectively QoQ.
SK hynix reported 13.81 trillion won in revenues, 4.19 trillion won in operating profit, and net income 2.88 trillion won in the second quarter of 2022
SK hynix analyzed that revenues fell QoQ as both sales volume and price decreased due to sluggish demand for DRAM and NAND products amid worsening macroeconomic environment worldwide. In addition, SK hynix explained that despite the company improved cost competitiveness by increasing the sales proportion and yield of the latest 1anm DRAM and 176-layer 4D NAND, operating profit also decreased due to greater price drop than cost reduction.
SK hynix diagnosed that the semiconductor memory industry is facing an unprecedented deterioration in market conditions as uncertainties in the business environment continued. The deterioration occurred as the shipments of PCs and smartphone manufacturers, which are major buyers of memory chips, have decreased.
However, SK hynix anticipated that the demand for memory chips in datacenter servers, while decreasing in the short term, will continue to grow in the mid- to long-term perspective, as hyperscale data centers are continuing their investment to meet the increasing scale of industries such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data and metaverse. SK hynix emphasized that as it is leading the latest DRAM technologies such as high bandwidth products including high bandwidth memory 3 (HBM3) and DDR5/LPDDR5, the company will solidify its position in terms of long-term growth.
In addition, SK hynix stressed that it will expand mass production of industry’s first 238-layer 4D NAND next year, which was developed in the third quarter of this year, and by doing so secure cost competitiveness and increase profitability continuously.
Meanwhile, SK hynix predicted that supply will continue to exceed demand for the time being. Given such consideration, the company has decided to reduce its investment next year by more than 50% YoY. The current year’s investment is expected to be at the upper range of 10-20 trillion won.
SK hynix also revealed that it plans to gradually reduce production volume focusing on relatively less profitable products. The plan is to normalize the market’s supply and demand balance by maintaining such tendency in investment and production reduction for a certain period of time.
“We will leap forward as a leading semiconductor memory player by overcoming this downturn based on our potential that has always turned crises into opportunities in the past,” said Kevin (Jongwon) Noh, chief marketing officer (CMO) at SK hynix.
