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Chipmaker SK Hynix overtook its larger rival Samsung on quarterly profit for the first time, with its lead in advanced memory chips producing robust sales that it expects to double this year as a boom in artificial intelligence data centres continues.
Operating profit at SK Hynix jumped more than 20-fold year on year to Won8.1tn ($5.6bn) in the final three months of 2024, exceeding Samsung’s estimated operating profit of Won6.5tn, as sales jumped 75 per cent to Won19.8tn.
SK Hynix on Thursday forecast demand for its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) products to continue increasing due to surging investment in AI servers and the growing importance of processing-intensive “inference” in which models generate predictions from data.
Generative AI leader OpenAI and Japan’s SoftBank said on Tuesday they would launch a massive US AI infrastructure project dubbed Stargate, with plans to spend up to $500bn over four years on Big Tech infrastructure projects, easing concerns that the global AI spending spree might have peaked.
HBM chips accounted for 40 per cent of SK Hynix’s total Dram chip revenue in the fourth quarter. The main supplier of such chips to Nvidia forecast HBM sales would more than double this year. It began to supply its most advanced 12-layer HBM3E chips in the fourth quarter and plans to ship next-generation 16-layer HBM4 chips in the second half of next year.
“We expect continued growth in SK Hynix earnings this year as AI spending is likely to continue to increase, fuelling HBM demand,” said Kwak Min-jung, an analyst at Hyundai Motor Securities.
The results were in line with analyst expectations, but the company’s shares fell 1.1 per cent on Thursday as investors took profits following a surge of about 30 per cent so far this year on renewed optimism over AI spending.
“The strong results highlight that HBM chips remain highly profitable, with Samsung yet to supply the chips to Nvidia,” said Albert Yong, managing partner at Seoul-based hedge fund Petra Capital Management.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said this month that Samsung, which is fighting for Nvidia’s business, had to “engineer a new design” to supply HBM chips to his company, although he added that “they can do it and they are working very fast”.
Shares of Samsung Electronics have gained just 0.5 per cent so far this year on continued concern over its technological edge.
“Huang’s comments indicated that Samsung has a long way to go,” said Yong. “SK Hynix remains far ahead of Samsung in the HBM segment and it will still take a long time for Samsung to catch up.”
Chey Tae-won, chair of parent SK Group, met Huang in Las Vegas this month to discuss ways to expand their business ties and told reporters at the Consumer Electronics Show that the company was quickening the pace of HBM development to keep up with Nvidia’s demands.
The company plans to slightly increase capital spending this year from about $15bn last year.
In a sluggish conventional memory market, SK Hynix said it expected sales of PCs and smartphones equipped with AI to expand and the market to pick up in the second half of the year.
