SEOUL: South Korea's SK Hynix on Thursday posted a record quarterly profit as the Nvidia supplier saw strong sales of its advanced chips such as high bandwidth memory (HBM) ones used in generative AI chipsets.
The world's second-biggest memory chipmaker reported a 7 trillion won (US$5.07 billion) operating profit for the July-September quarter versus a 1.8 trillion won loss a year earlier.
That compared with a 6.8 trillion won average forecast by LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward analysts who are more consistently accurate.
SK Hynix has outperformed rivals Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology in recent quarters, as it has benefited the most from AI-driven appetite for high-end memory chips following its early entry and large investments in HBM chip development.
"HBM sales showed excellent growth, up more than 70 per cent from the previous quarter and more than 330 per cent from the same period last year," SK Hynix said in a statement.
SK Hynix sees HBM sales making up 40 per cent of its total DRAM revenue in the fourth quarter, up from 30 per cent in the third quarter, and added it expects memory chip demand for AI servers to grow further next year as global tech companies continue developing generative AI.
Revenue for the quarter rose 94 per cent year-on-year to 17.6 trillion won.
SK Hynix shares have jumped 38.5 per cent so far this year, outperforming Samsung, whose stocks has slumped 24.7 per cent over the same period.
Last month, SK Hynix, the main supplier of HBM chips to Nvidia, said it had started mass production of HBM3E 12-layer chips and plans to supply the latest products to unidentified customers by the end of this year.
Its bigger rival Samsung earlier this month warned its third-quarter profit would come in below market expectations and apologised for the disappointing performance, acknowledging its struggle to make headway in supplying high-end chips.