PC DRAM price fall to curb SK Hynix earnings: report

HONG KONG (Yonhap News) ― SK Hynix Inc., the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker, will see its earnings restrained by weakening prices of dynamic random-access memory used in manufacturing PCs, a report said Thursday.

Macquarie said in the report that it is downgrading its rating on SK hynix by one notch to “neutral” from “buy,” saying the company’s operating profit will be affected by the delayed recovery of the PC DRAM market.

It also slashed its target price for the South Korean firm to 21,000 won ($18.4) from 35,000 won.

“The PC DRAM price is expected to fall about 20 percent in the third quarter of 2012,” said Daniel Kim, a Macquarie analyst.

The falling DDR3 price should have a negative impact on PC-related specialty DRAMS such as graphic and server DRAMs, the investment bank said.

“SK hynix as a pure memory semiconductor player is unlikely to see a strong share price recovery amid the softening DRAM prices,” Kim said.

SK hynix’s sales are broken down into PC DRAM with 21 percent, mobile DRAM with 17 percent, server memory with 16 percent, graphics memory with 9 percent, NAND flash memory with 26 percent and other areas with 11 percent in the first quarter of 2012, according to Macquarie.

However, the investment bank said it remains optimistic of the long-term mobile DRAM opportunity for SK hynix in light of the growing market of mobile devices.

The semiconductor company, formerly Hynix Semiconductor Inc., was acquired by the country’s No. 3 conglomerate SK Group last year.

SK hynix vies with market leader Samsung Electronics Co. in the global DRAM chip market and with Japan’s Toshiba Corp. in the NAND flash memory arena.