• Revenues at 12.43 trillion won, operating profit at 2.886 trillion won, net profit at 1.917 trillion won

• 1Q revenues all-time high, operating profit 2^nd highest for 1Q result

• NAND turns around on rise in eSSD sales, product prices

• To continue to work towards improving earnings with leadership in AI memory

SEOUL, South Korea, April 24, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- SK hynix Inc. (or "the company", www.skhynix.com) announced today that it recorded 12.43 trillion won in revenues, 2.886 trillion won in operating profit (with an operating margin of 23%), and 1.917 trillion won in net profit (with a net margin of 15%) in the first quarter.

With revenues marking an all-time high for a first quarter and the operating profit a second-highest following the records of the first quarter of 2018, SK hynix believes that it has entered the phase of a clear rebound following a prolonged downturn.

The company said that an increase in the sales of AI server products backed by its leadership in AI memory technology including HBM and continued efforts to prioritize profitability led to a 734% on-quarter jump in the operating profit. With the sales ratio of eSSD, a premium product, on the rise and the average selling prices rising, the NAND business has also achieved a meaningful turnaround in the same period.

SK hynix forecasts the overall memory market to be on a steady growth path in coming months as demand for AI memory continues to rise, while the market for the conventional DRAM also starts to recover from the second half. Industry experts believe that inventories both at suppliers and customers will decrease as an increase in production of premium products such as HBM requires higher production capacities than conventional DRAM, resulting in a relative reduction in conventional DRAM supply.

In the DRAM space, the company plans to increase supply volume of HBM3E, of which mass production has started in March for the first time in the industry, while expanding the customer base. The company will also introduce 32Gb DDR5 products based on the 1bnm process, the fifth generation of the 10nm technology, within this year to strengthen its leadership in the high-capacity server DRAM market.

For the NAND business, SK hynix will seek product optimization to sustain the trend of earnings recovery. SK hynix will aggressively increase the sales of both high-performance 16-channel eSSD, an area where the company has a technological edge, and QLC-based high-capacity eSSD by its U.S. subsidiary Solidigm. It will also launch the fifth generation of the PCIe cSSD for AI PCs at an early time in order to respond to market demands with an optimized product lineup.