SK Hynix shares fall; earnings jump fails to satisfy AI expectations

SK Hynix shares nosedived on Wednesday as exponential second-quarter earnings and revenue growth failed to satisfy analysts’ supercharged expectations for an artificial-intelligence darling.

Here are SK Hynix’s second-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimates, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate: 

• Revenue: 79.32 trillion won ($54.55 billion) vs. 84 trillion won expected
• Operating profit: 60.54 trillion won vs. 64 trillion won expected

After falling as much as 15% earlier in the session, the stock trimmed its losses to close 9.6% lower on Wednesday. The company’s U.S.-listed shares were last trading down 3.4%.

Revenue jumped 257% year on year in the quarter ended June from a year earlier, while operating profit soared nearly 557% year on year, the company’s release showed. 

Compared with the previous quarter, revenue increased 51% while operating profit gained 61%. 

The company said it saw sustained demand growth from expanding AI infrastructure investments, while high-performance products for AI servers led price increases that set a fresh record.

For the first time in company history, its cumulative revenue for the first half of the year exceeded 100 trillion won, underscoring robust AI demand. 

SK Hynix said it expects this year’s capital expenditures to reach the high 40 trillion won range and plans to build on its ADR listed on Nasdaq earlier this month.

The company emphasized that it will prioritize investments in growth and work to secure a sound financial structure. It also continues to review shareholder-return policies.

Going forward, the company aims to maximize production by utilizing existing manufacturing hubs in Icheon and Yongin, while also boosting NAND production and advanced packaging in Cheongju.

Josh Gilbert, lead analyst for APAC at eToro, said the company’s gross margin of 83% indicate that pricing power is still alive and well. “That doesn’t exist in a market where demand is drying up; it exists in one where customers are fighting over supply,” he said. 

Both DRAM and NAND flash memory prices saw a quarter-over-quarter increase, with the company achieving top-tier profitability by expanding sales focused on high-value-added products, including HBM, DRAM for AI servers, and enterprise SSDs.

Driven by ongoing revenue from AI services and surging infrastructure investments from major tech companies, memory demand momentum is expected to persist as supply requests continue to mount.

SK Hynix said its HBM4 has demonstrated a differentiated technological edge, touting its power efficiency and cost competitiveness. The company began mass shipments of HBM4 in the second quarter to ramp up production in the second half, while also completing sample shipments of HBM4E during the first half.

Regarding NAND, SK Hynix is accelerating its transition to advanced process nodes to strengthen its portfolio around high-capacity and high-performance products, with 321-layer products already capturing the largest share of total production and targeted to reach about 50% of domestic production capacity by the end of the year.

The South Korean tech giant, which makes memory chips and supplies components for hardware from data centers to consumer electronics such as smartphones, counts U.S. megacaps including Nvidia among its key clients — a partnership that recently expanded through a multiyear deal worth over $500 billion.