South Korea's SK hynix posted on Wednesday a second-quarter net profit of 94 trillion won (HK$506 billion), a year-on-year rise of 1,242 percent, driven by the AI industry's explosive demand for its memory chips.

The firm's quarterly earnings report also said April-June operating profit jumped 557 percent from last year to 60 trillion won, while revenue reached 79 trillion won.

In a statement the company described it as "an all-time high quarterly performance".

Growth was attributed to sustained demand from expanding investments in AI infrastructure, as the technology evolves into more complex forms requiring more of the firm's high bandwidth memory chips.

"With major tech companies increasing their AI infrastructure investments, additional supply requests continue to mount," said a statement.

"As these investments are supported by revenue generated from AI services, the momentum in memory demand is expected to persist."

SK hynix, a supplier to industry behemoth Nvidia, has seen profits soar during the global race to build artificial intelligence data centres.

Its parent firm SK Group announced on Saturday plans for a new US$500 billion collaboration with Nvidia to invest in AI infrastructure.

Earlier this month, SK hynix also raised US$26.5 billion through an American Depositary Receipt listing in the US, one of the world's largest-ever equity offerings.

Despite aggressive investments, shares of SK hynix and its larger South Korean rival Samsung Electronics have fallen sharply by 33 percent and 41 percent respectively over the past month.

SK hynix shares tumbled 14 percent on Tuesday, the day before the earnings release.

The dip has been caused by concerns about AI industry sustainability and conflict in the Middle East spooking investors, KB Securities analyst Kim Dong-won said in a note on Monday.

Nonetheless, Kim forecast memory chip prices are likely to rise "at least 30 percent in the third quarter" with supply shortages likely to persist through to 2028.

Samsung Electronics is due to report its quarterly earnings on Thursday.

The company has forecast second-quarter operating profits to increase 1,800 percent on last year. (AFP)



Edited by Cecil Wong