SK hynix posts record Q1 operating profit of 37.6 trillion won

Apr 23, 2026, 08:15 am

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SK hynix Newsroom

SK hynix reported record quarterly results for the first quarter, posting 52.5763 trillion won in revenue and 37.6103 trillion won in operating profit, the company said on April 23.

Revenue surged 198% from a year earlier, while operating profit jumped 405%. Its operating margin reached 72%.

The company said quarterly revenue exceeded 50 trillion won for the first time, while both operating profit and operating margin marked the highest levels in its history. Operating profit also roughly doubled from the previous quarter.

SK hynix said demand remained strong despite the seasonal slowdown in the first quarter, driven by continued investment in AI infrastructure. It said earnings growth was supported by expanded sales of high-value-added products such as HBM, high-capacity DRAM modules for servers and eSSDs.

Backed by strong earnings, cash and cash equivalents rose by 19.4 trillion won from the end of the previous quarter to 54.3 trillion won as of the end of the first quarter. Borrowings fell by 2.9 trillion won to 19.3 trillion won, leaving the company with 35 trillion won in net cash.

The company said AI is evolving from training large models to an agentic AI stage that repeatedly performs real-time inference across various service environments, broadening the base of memory demand across both DRAM and NAND.

It added that the spread of memory-efficiency technologies is likely to improve the economics of AI services and lead to further expansion of overall service scale, providing an additional boost to memory demand.

Based on that outlook, SK hynix expects favorable pricing conditions to continue for both DRAM and NAND.

The company said it will continue developing and supplying new products across both DRAM and NAND to respond to increasingly diversified memory demand.

For HBM, SK hynix said it will further strengthen its overall execution capabilities spanning performance, yield, quality and supply stability. In DRAM, it plans to step up supply of LPDDR6, the industry’s first product to adopt the sixth-generation 10-nanometer-class 1c process, along with 192GB SOCAMM2, which entered mass production this month on the same process.

SK hynix said this year’s investment will increase significantly from last year, driven by the ramp-up of M15X, infrastructure preparation centered on the Yongin cluster, and the securing of key equipment including EUV systems.

“We will strategically expand our production base to proactively respond to mid- to long-term demand growth,” the company said. “Through investment based on demand visibility, we will secure both supply stability and financial soundness.”

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