SK hynix sales more than double in China, US in H1

SK hynix witnessed its sales in China and the US more than double to contribute to an overall growth in revenue in the first half of this year, according to the company’s half-year report Sunday.

The world’s second-largest memory chip maker said it logged a total of 28.8 trillion won ($21.26 billion) in sales in the January-June period this year, marking a significant recovery from the 12.3 trillion won the company achieved in the same time last year.

In this year's record, 55.4 percent of the sales came from the US and 29.8 percent from China.

In the US, the company posted sales of 15.9 trillion won, marking a nearly three-fold growth from that of last year's 5.4 trillion won.

In China, the company's revenue more than doubled to 8.6 trillion won in the first half of this year, from the 3.8 trillion won recorded last year.

Domestic sales edged up to 967 billion won from 865 billion won.

Recovery in memory chip prices, adding to the increasing demand for high-value-added AI chips, supported the chipmaker's growth, according to an industry official.

“The chip market downturn has slowed down, and now the demand is going up to raise SK hynix' domestic and overseas sales," an industry official said.

"As the AI market is expanding, the sales in the US appear to show a bigger increase. The US is home to many big techs doing AI."

The company benefited as the price of DRAM and NAND flash memory chips rose in recent months. Increasing demand for expensive memory chips for AI applications, such as High Bandwidth Memory and enterprise Solid State drive memory chips also backed the company's earnings growth, industry observers say.

The chipmaker posted 18.1 trillion won in DRAM sales and 9.5 trillion won in NAND flash chips in the first half of this year. In the same time last year, the company posted 7.3 trillion won in DRAM sales and 3.9 trillion won in NAND flash.

The chipmaker saw its manufacturing facilities in China recover profit in the first half of this year.

In the half-year report, SK hynix' DRAM manufacturing plant in Wuxi, China recorded sales of 2.6 trillion won and a net profit of 119.4 billion won. The company had logged a net loss of 165.6 billion won in the same time last year.

In China, the chipmaker currently operates the Wuxi DRAM factory, a packaging factory in Chongqing and a NAND flash production plant in Dalian.

SK hynix America, the chipmaker's US headquarters, posted sales of 12.1 trillion won and a net profit of 165.2 billion won in the first half of this year. The US office saw its sales triple, and turned to profit, from a loss of 74.1 billion won in the first half of 2023.

With its dominance in the expensive HBM chip market, SK hynix also became the only company that increased its share in the global DRAM market in the April-June period this year. HBM is a DRAM chip deemed crucial to speed up AI applications.

According to market tracker TrendForce, the global DRAM market posted total sales of $22.9 billion in the second quarter this year, up 24.8 percent on-year. SK hynix maintained No. 2 in the market, posting sales of $7.9 billion to take 34.5 percent of the market. The company’s market share increased by 3.4 percentage points on-quarter.

Samsung Electronics, the largest memory chip maker by revenue, logged sales of $9.8 trillion won during the three-month period. The company's market share decreased by 1 percentage point from the first quarter to the second quarter, to land at 42.9 percent.