Shares of SK Hynix Inc. tumbled after a rout in tech stocks, overwhelming solid financial results for the supplier to Nvidia Corp. in the June quarter.
The company, which supplies chips that train artificial intelligence models, reported sales more than doubled to 16.4 trillion won ($15.92 billion) as revenue for its high-bandwidth memory surged more than 250%. Operating profit in the three months to June also beat expectations, coming to 5.47 trillion won with an operating margin of 33%, helped by a rise in overall prices of DRAM and NAND.
But its shares fell as much as 6.7%, the biggest intraday fall since April 19, as investors soured on the promise of AI.
The company said capex this year would likely top earlier plans to keep up with a boom in spending on AI hardware. It also said it will mass produce its next-generation 12-layer HBM3E chips this quarter, widening its lead over rivals Samsung Electronics Co. and Micron Technology Inc. in designing and supplying the high-end memory that powers Nvidia’s AI accelerators. HBM3E products would make up about half the volume of all its HBM chips this year, it said.
SK Hynix’s report may assuage growing concerns that AI spending will begin to decelerate as US curbs on supplying China take hold, while the frenetic pace of data centre investments slows. This week, Morgan Stanley cut AI chip-sector stocks including SK Hynix and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. from its focus lists, warning that it may be time to take a breather. US tech stocks went into a tailspin overnight as investors soured on the promise of AI, with Nvidia falling 6.8%.
SK Hynix remains one of the main beneficiaries of a race to supply components essential to creating ChatGPT-like generative AI services. The Korean company revealed in May that its capacity to make high-bandwidth memory chips was almost fully booked through 2025, reflecting a widening lead over Samsung.
That’s helped power a 47% gain in SK Hynix from the start of the year to Wednesday’s close, a rally mirrored by many of the AI sector’s emerging new leaders. But that global stock boom wobbled last week after investors reassessed the potential for further gains amid looming central bank policy shifts and the US presidential election. Some analysts warned that the hype over untested AI applications was driving outsized market gains with AI technology yet to reach its full potential.
“We are not calling for the ‘end of the cycle’ – but with all the focus on shortages and talk of a new AI paradigm, it is important not to lose sight of the normal, cyclical nature of the semiconductor market,” Morgan Stanley analysts including Shawn Kim and Charlie Chan wrote in a separate report.
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What Bloomberg Intelligence Says
SK Hynix’s 2Q operating-profit margin could have hit 37-40% due to improving average selling prices (ASP) for DRAM and NAND chips, as Micron recently achieved a 20% ASP rise. SK Hynix’s dominant market share in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips might have boosted operating margin. SK Hynix may expect bit-shipments of DRAM and NAND to grow sequentially in 3Q due to a seasonal demand increase. As the firm is expanding production capacity of HBM, its sales could continue to grow in 2H.- Masahiro Wakasugi, analyst
For the long run, SK Hynix is earmarking some US$15 billion ($20.15 billion) in South Korea to meet surging demand for high-end chips, on top of a plan to spend US$3.9 billion on an advanced packaging plant and research center for artificial intelligence products in Indiana
