SK hynix Inc., the world's No. 2 memory chip maker, said Tuesday its net profit surged 382.1 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier on the back of improved sales in major product lineups.
Net profit came to 789.1 billion won ($729 million) in the October-December period, soaring from 163.6 billion won posted the previous year, SK hynix said in a regulatory filing.
Revenue gained 23.9 percent on-year to 3.36 trillion won in the fourth quarter, and operating profit also jumped to 784.7 billion won from last year's 54.9 billion won.
The stronger overall bottom line was attributed to solid sales of DRAMs and NAND flash solution products, it said.
SK's fourth-quarter operating profit, however, shed 32.6 percent from the previous quarter as its production line in China was stalled from a fire in September. The plant is expected to be normalized at the end of January.
SK hynix said the production of DRAM shed 13 percent on-quarter in the October-December period, while that of NAND flash moved down 14 percent.
The average sales price of DRAM edged up 1 percent, while that of NAND flash fell 5 percent amid falling demand from the mobile sectors, it added.
For all of 2013, SK turned to net profit of 2.8 trillion won, with its revenue increasing 39.4 percent to 14.1 trillion won. Its operating performance turned to a profit of 3.3 trillion won.
"Despite the delayed production (due to the fire), the favorable global price of chips and improved sales in all product lines lent support to the company's record-high earnings for 2013," the company said.
SK said although it has injected some 250 billion won into rebuilding the plant, the robust sales covered the expenditure.
The company said it invested 3.56 trillion won in facilities last year, and added the number is expected to edge up this year.
For 2014, the company said it plans to expand production of mobile DRAMs, launch high bandwidth memory products and also promote its DDR4 chips.
The new LPDDR4 is the industry's first eight-gigabit memory chip using 20 nanometer technology with a speed of 3,200 megabits per second (Mbps), two times faster than the 1,600 Mbps of its predecessor LPDDR3.
The company added it plans to commence full-fledged production of 16-nanometer NAND application solutions and also start providing samples of 3D NAND.
Shares of SK hynix closed at 35,250 won on the main bourse Monday, down 1.81 percent from Friday's close. The fourth-quarter earnings were released before the market opened. (Yonhap)
