{"id":9960,"date":"2026-10-28T17:00:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T17:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/intnews.it\/?p=9960"},"modified":"2026-10-28T17:00:34","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T17:00:34","slug":"sk-hynix-earnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intnews.it\/en\/sk-hynix-earnings\/","title":{"rendered":"SK hynix earnings: 80% margin and contracts through 2028"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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SK hynix, the South Korean maker of DRAM, NAND and HBM memory, reported on October 28, 2026 the most profitable quarter in its history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last updated: October 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is for information only. It is not financial advice or an investment recommendation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third-quarter revenue reached 104.6 trillion won, the first quarter above 100 trillion, with an 80% operating margin. The figure that matters most for the industry is a different one: SK hynix has already committed more than half of its 2027 and 2028 production capacity under multi-year contracts. The stock closed 10.89% higher in Seoul, according to CNBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What did SK hynix report for Q3 2026?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Item (trillion won)<\/td>Q3 2026<\/td>Q2 2026<\/td>Q3 2025<\/td>Year-on-year<\/td><\/tr><\/thead>
Revenue<\/td>104.6<\/td>79.3<\/td>24.4<\/td>+328%<\/td><\/tr>
Operating profit<\/td>83.3<\/td>60.5<\/td>11.4<\/td>+632%<\/td><\/tr>
Operating margin<\/td>80%<\/td>76%<\/td>47%<\/td>+33 points<\/td><\/tr>
Net income<\/td>39.8<\/td>93.9<\/td>12.6<\/td>+216%<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Source: SK hynix press release, October 28, 2026. Preliminary figures under K-IFRS.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analysts expected less. CNBC put consensus at 98.34 trillion won in revenue and 76.72 trillion in operating profit; the FnGuide average reported by Seoul Economic Daily was 96.66 and 75.97 trillion. CNBC converts revenue to $78.86 billion. Net cash stood at 98.7 trillion won at the end of September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How did SK hynix reach an 80% operating margin?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The company credits higher prices for its main products, driven by demand for AI memory, and a mix tilted toward high-value parts: server DDR5 and the first volume HBM4 shipments in DRAM, 321-layer data-center SSDs in NAND. It expects demand to outrun supply through 2030, citing the technical difficulty of leading-edge processes and the long lead time for new fabs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seoul Economic Daily puts the result in context: SK hynix’s operating profit is now third among global tech companies, behind Samsung Electronics (107.4 trillion won) and Nvidia ($63.7 billion, or 84.6 trillion won), and ahead of Apple ($50.9 billion), which previously held third place. Its 79.7% margin trails only Micron’s 80.7%, the paper reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why is HBM squeezing PC and phone memory?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) is stacked DRAM: several memory dies connected vertically by through-silicon vias and placed next to the processor. The JEDEC HBM4 standard, published in April 2025, specifies a 2,048-bit interface at up to 8 Gb\/s per pin, 2 TB\/s per stack, and stacks of up to 16 dies and 64 GB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Micron has said HBM takes roughly three times the wafer area of DDR5 for the same capacity. At Hot Chips in August 2026, Micron’s Raghu Sreeramaneni said the gap widens with each generation, Tom’s Hardware reported. Every wafer moved to HBM removes capacity from commodity memory. SK hynix expects HBM4 to overtake HBM3E in both volume and revenue in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Are long-term agreements ending the memory cycle?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

SK hynix has signed long-term agreements (LTAs) with 14 major customers, including leading cloud providers, typically for five years. Contracted volumes cover more than 50% of total capacity for 2027 and 2028. Prices are not fixed: they move within a range agreed with each customer and track market conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the structural change in the quarter. Memory has always traded like a commodity, with spot prices that boom and bust within a few quarters. Buyers who lock in five years of supply are signalling that they expect scarcity, and the price range cushions the producer against a collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether the cycle is really over cannot be judged from outside. SK hynix does not disclose the width of the range or customer concentration, and market volatility has not gone away: SanDisk lost 47% from its peak in a month<\/a> this summer with no change in its fundamentals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why did SK hynix’s net income fall 58%?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Net income dropped from 93.9 to 39.8 trillion won while operating profit rose 38%. In the second quarter, non-operating items had lifted net income above operating profit by more than 33 trillion won. In the third, foreign-exchange losses on a strong won and valuation losses on investment assets weighed, according to the earnings call transcript published by Investing.com. Operating profit is the metric to watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How much is SK hynix returning to shareholders?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

About 100 trillion won for fiscal 2026: at least 30 trillion in dividends and at least 60 trillion in buybacks and cancellations, including the 40 trillion announced in August and completed last week. The third-quarter dividend is 20,000 won per share, half of it a special payout from gains on the Kioxia stake. The company also dropped its review of a Solidigm IPO, with CEO Kwak Noh-Jung citing current financial market conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SK hynix trades on the Korea Exchange (000660), has global depositary shares in Luxembourg and, according to Investing.com, has traded on Nasdaq as ADRs under SKHY since July 10, 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What does it mean for Europe?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Europe’s most direct listed exposure to this cycle is Italy’s Technoprobe, which makes probe cards used to test chips on the wafer. In the first half of 2026 it reported revenue of \u20ac464.1 million (up 42.4%) and raised its 2026 revenue target to \u20ac1.05-1.10 billion, citing AI, data centers and advanced memory and logic. Its core business has historically been non-memory chips; it announced its entry into memory testing, including HBM, in 2025, and does not report HBM revenue separately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For device buyers, Gartner expects average PC prices to rise 17% and smartphone prices 13% in 2026 versus 2025, and sees no meaningful memory price relief before late 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What we don’t know yet<\/h2>\n\n\n\n