Storage King's performance report is out! SK Hynix's Q4 operating profit reached 19 trillion KRW, with HBM revenue doubling! [CSOP ETF Market Update]

SK Hynix just delivered its strongest-ever financial results! Q4 operating profit for FY2025 doubled year-on-year to KRW 19.2 trillion (~USD 13.5 billion), far exceeding market expectations of KRW 16.7 trillion! Quarterly revenue reached KRW 32.8 trillion, with full-year revenue surpassing KRW 97 trillion, setting new all-time highs across all three metrics. Boosted by the results, SK Hynix shares rose 2.6% in after-hours trading on the 28th to KRW 863,000.

AI memory chips were the key driver behind SK Hynix's breakthrough performance. In its DRAM business, HBM sales more than doubled year-on-year, becoming the primary contributor to the record results. For general DRAM, SK Hynix has officially begun mass production of 6th-gen 10nm-class (1c) DDR5 DRAM and successfully developed the industry's highest-capacity 256GB server DDR5 RDIMM module based on 5th-gen 10nm-class (1b) 32Gb dies.

In NAND flash, despite weak demand in the first half, SK Hynix completed development of 321-layer QLC products and achieved record annual sales in the second half by meeting demand primarily for enterprise SSDs (eSSDs).

The company expects that as the AI market shifts from training to inference, demand for distributed architectures will continue to expand, further highlighting the importance of memory. Not only will demand grow for high-performance memory like HBM, but overall demand for server-oriented DRAM and NAND flash will also expand in tandem.

SK Hynix also disclosed plans to cancel treasury shares worth ~USD 8.6 billion next month as part of efforts to enhance shareholder returns. Additionally, the company reiterated that it is considering a US listing but has yet to make a decision.

The market expects the current memory supply-demand imbalance to persist. Citi analysts raised SK Hynix's target price by 56%, forecasting DRAM ASPs to rise 120% and NAND 90% this year.

SK Hynix's robust performance validates the long-term bullish outlook for AI-driven memory demand, with memory chips in short supply. Investors looking to position in Korean memory leaders should focus on $XL2CSOPHYNIX(07709.HK) .

$XL2CSOPSMSN(07747.HK) $Micron Tech(MU.US) $Sandisk(SNDK.US)

Source: Wall Street News

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