SK Hynix "NAND Sales Targeted to Triple Within 5 Years"

CEO Lee Seok-hee Presents Vision for 'Intel NAND Business Acquisition'
Q3 Operating Profit Reaches 1.3 Trillion Won

[Asia Economy Reporter Dongwoo Lee] SK Hynix, which acquired Intel's NAND business division, has announced a vision to grow NAND sales more than threefold within the next five years.

Lee Seok-hee, CEO of SK Hynix, said during a conference call following the Q3 earnings announcement on the 4th, "With SK Hynix's acquisition of Intel's NAND division, we will secure self-sustaining business capabilities in NAND within the next three years and grow Hynix's NAND sales more than three times compared to pre-acquisition levels within five years." He added, "We have been recognized only as a leading DRAM company, but through the Intel NAND acquisition, we aim to be acknowledged as a top memory player."

According to market research firm Omdia, SK Hynix's NAND sales last year amounted to $4.552 billion (approximately 5.2 trillion KRW). Considering this, the company aims to achieve sales exceeding 15 trillion KRW from NAND alone by 2025.

Hynix has recently maintained strong performance, solidifying its position as a global semiconductor leader. The consolidated operating profit for Q3 announced on the day was 1.2996 trillion KRW, a sharp increase of 175% compared to the same period last year. Sales rose 18.9% year-on-year to 8.1287 trillion KRW. Net profit increased by 117.5% to 1.0779 trillion KRW.

Despite falling memory prices, SK Hynix sustained strong results due to urgent orders triggered by U.S. sanctions on Huawei. DRAM shipments increased by 4% compared to the previous quarter, driven by new demand in mobile and graphics sectors. NAND flash shipments rose 9% over the same period due to expanded sales of mobile products and solid-state drives (SSD) for new game consoles; however, average selling prices fell 10% due to price weakness in server products.

SK Hynix plans to focus on meeting mobile demand by expanding sales of 10nm-class 2nd generation (1Y) LPDDR5 in DRAM and to grow the multi-chip package market combined with high-capacity NAND flash. In particular, the company intends to increase the sales proportion of high-capacity server products of 64GB or more and maximize sales of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) products to strengthen quality competitiveness in the server DRAM market.

For NAND flash, SK Hynix will actively respond to stable mobile demand while expanding the proportion of 128-layer based products, which began full-scale sales in Q3, to improve profitability.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.