Seoul, Jan 28 Chipmaking giant SK hynix has surpassed its biggest rival, Samsung Electronics, for the first time ever in terms of quarterly profit, data showed on Tuesday, as its robust sales of artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips pushed up its fourth-quarter figures to record highs.
According to its quarterly earnings report, SK hynix posted a record 8.08 trillion won ($5.62 billion) in operating profit for the October-December period, up 15 per cent from a year earlier.
In comparison, Samsung Electronics estimated its fourth-quarter operating profit at 6.5 trillion won, including some 3 trillion won from the semiconductor division. The tech giant has yet to disclose its final earnings results, reports Yonhap news agency.
It marks the first time SK hynix has outperformed Samsung Electronics, whose diverse business spans home appliances, mobile devices and semiconductors, in quarterly operating profit.
For the entire 2024, SK hynix's annual operating profit totalled a record 23.47 trillion won, while Samsung Electronics' chip division is forecast to earn around 15 trillion won.
SK hynix's stellar performance was fueled by strong demand for premium high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips amid the generative AI boom, despite sluggish demand for conventional memory chips used in smartphones and personal computers.
SK hynix has dominated the HBM market since it began providing its HBM to Nvidia Corp., whose graphic processing units (GPUs) are critical for AI computing.
In the fourth quarter, HBM sales accounted for more than 40 percent of the company's DRAM sales, up from 30 percent in the previous quarter.
"SK hynix has a portfolio of higher value-added products than its competitors, making it less affected by market downturns," said Ryu Young-ho, an analyst from NH Investment & Securities Co.
Samsung Electronics, the world's No. 1 memory chipmaker, has been struggling to boost its profit as its HBM has yet to hit the global market.
SK hynix, which currently supplies nearly all of its HBM shipments to Nvidia, is expected to maintain its leadership in the HBM market for some time.
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