SK Hynix posted record-breaking profits for fiscal year 2025, a significant leap driven by a surge in demand for AI-specific memory chips that sent prices soaring and surpassed market expectations. The South Korean semiconductor giant also reported its strongest ever fourth quarter, solidifying its position in the competitive race for global memory market leadership against rival Samsung.
The company’s financial performance highlights the transformative impact of the artificial intelligence boom. SK Hynix, a key player in the supply chain for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) chips – essential components for powering AI data center servers – saw its HBM revenue more than double in 2025. This specialized memory, a high-performance variant of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), is critical for the complex computations required by AI models.
For the full fiscal year 2025, SK Hynix announced a record revenue of 97.147 trillion won, a nearly 50% increase from the previous year. Annual operating profit more than doubled to 47.206 trillion won. In the fourth quarter alone, revenue climbed approximately 66% year-on-year, while operating profit experienced a dramatic surge of 137%.
“SK Hynix stands out as one of Asia’s premier beneficiaries of the AI revolution,” commented Ray Wang, an analyst at SemiAnalysis specializing in memory and AI supply chains. “Its leadership in HBM, coupled with robust overall memory capabilities, positions it exceptionally well. Looking ahead, we anticipate that conventional DRAM will emerge as a significant profit driver, bolstered by expanding profit margins and demand fueled by a structural supply deficit.”
The insatiable demand for HBM has far outstripped available supply, creating ripple effects across the entire memory sector, including less advanced chips used in consumer electronics and electric vehicles. This dynamic has led to a significant uptick in memory prices, with industry observers predicting the shortages to persist into the next year as manufacturers like SK Hynix scale up production capacity.
In addition to its impressive financial results, SK Hynix announced a further dividend payout of 1 trillion won, bringing its total fiscal 2025 dividend distribution to 2.1 trillion won. The company also revealed plans to cancel treasury shares valued at 12.24 trillion won, a strategic move aimed at enhancing shareholder value. This announcement followed a significant rise in the company’s stock price the previous day, reportedly spurred by news that SK Hynix had secured exclusive supplier status for advanced memory chips used in a new Microsoft AI processor.
SK Hynix is scheduled to host an investor earnings call today. Samsung, its primary competitor in the memory market, including the crucial HBM segment, is also slated to release its earnings on the same day, setting the stage for continued scrutiny of the sector’s leading players.
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