SK Hynix Posts a Record 104.6 Trillion Won Quarter on HBM4 Demand and Locks In Over Half Its 2027-28 Capacity

SK hynix reported its best quarter in company history on Wednesday morning in Korea: third-quarter revenue of 104.6155 trillion won, up 328 percent from a year earlier and 32 percent from the previous quarter, marking the first time the memory maker has crossed the 100 trillion won mark in a single quarter. Operating profit surged 632 percent year over year to 83.3338 trillion won, handing the company an 80 percent operating margin. Both figures beat consensus estimates of 98.96 trillion won and 77.5 trillion won respectively. Net profit came in at 39.7756 trillion won, up 216 percent year over year but down 58 percent from the previous quarter, and short of the 59.66 trillion won analysts had modeled. All figures are company-reported and unaudited.

The company attributed the record to AI storage demand pushing prices up across its portfolio. HBM4 shipments are now in full swing, server DDR5 sales grew sharply, and 321-layer TLC enterprise SSDs continued to expand among data-center customers. The stock rose as much as 6.79 percent in Seoul morning trading, and the gains spilled across the market: the KOSPI climbed more than 4 percent, with Samsung Electronics up over 4 percent in sympathy.

The balance sheet reflects the windfall. Cash and cash equivalents reached 114.5 trillion won at the end of September, up 26.5 trillion won from the previous quarter, while borrowings fell 2.8 trillion won to 15.8 trillion won. SK hynix also unveiled an expanded shareholder return program of roughly 100 trillion won for fiscal 2026: at least 30 trillion won in cash dividends plus at least 60 trillion won in buybacks and cancellations, including the 40 trillion won repurchase announced in August, with 10 trillion won of the repurchased stock earmarked for cancellation.

Perhaps the most consequential disclosure was about duration. The company said it has signed long-term supply agreements with 14 major customers, including the world's largest cloud service providers, and that the locked-in volumes already exceed 50 percent of its total 2027 and 2028 capacity. Some customers are in early talks to extend agreements that typically run five years. The contracts are structured to reflect market prices within agreed bands, which management says preserves flexibility while securing revenue visibility.

On the supply side, SK hynix does not expect relief soon. It argued that increasingly difficult process nodes and the long build times for new fabs mean the supply-demand imbalance will persist through 2030. For the fourth quarter, it expects HBM4 to overtake HBM3E in both shipment volume and revenue, and plans to lift 321-layer NAND to more than half of its Korean domestic capacity. Management said it will keep expanding output, but will adjust the scale and timing of investments against customer demand, competitiveness and returns.

The quarter is the clearest accounting yet of where the AI buildout's money lands. Every hyperscaler rushing to stand up Rubin-class clusters needs someone to sell it memory, and right now that someone can price accordingly. An 80 percent operating margin at a memory company — historically one of the most cyclical businesses in tech — says the AI shortage has inverted the cycle's usual rules. The risk embedded in those 14 long-term contracts cuts both ways: they guarantee SK hynix revenue into 2028, but if AI demand cools before then, customers locked into market-priced bands may find themselves renegotiating from weakness rather than strength.