SK hynix reports an 80% operating margin

SK hynix just put up a quarter that looks almost absurd on paper. Revenue hit 104.6155 trillion won, operating profit reached 83.3338 trillion won, and net profit came in at 39.7756 trillion won. It was the first time quarterly sales topped 100 trillion won, and the operating margin landed at 80%.

The driver is still AI memory. The company said rising demand pushed up prices for key products, while sales of server DDR5 and HBM4 helped DRAM performance. On the NAND side, 321-layer TLC eSSD and other higher-value data center products kept growing. Revenue rose 32% from the previous quarter, while operating profit climbed 38%.

CEO Kwak Noh-Jung also used the earnings call to shut down the Solidigm IPO review. The idea had been to raise outside capital for Solidigm’s expansion and ease SK hynix’s own spending burden, but the company decided current market conditions made that the wrong move. Instead, it will keep leaning on a policy of returning gains from strategic investments to shareholders.

That policy is showing up in cash. SK hynix said it will return about 100 trillion won to shareholders this year, including dividends of 30 trillion won or more and share buybacks and cancellations of 60 trillion won or more. It also plans a third-quarter cash dividend of 14 trillion won and a 20 trillion won buyback, with half of that repurchase set aside for cancellation and the other half for employee compensation.

The company is betting the memory shortage lasts. It expects demand to stay ahead of supply through 2030, helped by AI infrastructure spending and the move from a few giant buyers to broader enterprise and national demand. To meet that, it says HBM4 should become the mainstream product in the fourth quarter, while long-term contracts now cover more than half of its 2027 and 2028 production capacity.