South Korean chipmaker SK hynix reported a more than sevenfold rise in quarterly operating profit to a record high on Wednesday, beating market forecasts as continued demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure drove up memory chip prices. Operating profit for July to September reached 83.3 trillion won, compared with 11.4 trillion won a year earlier, while quarterly revenue rose 328 percent to 104.6 trillion won.
The Nvidia supplier also announced shareholder returns totalling about 100 trillion won, about $75.4 billion, this year, comprising cash dividends of 30 trillion won and share repurchases and cancellations of 60 trillion won, including 40 trillion won announced in August. Its US-listed shares jumped 7.8 percent and memory-chip rival Micron gained 4 percent in premarket trading.
The results set the tone for the week’s biggest earnings test, with Microsoft and Alphabet due to report after US markets close on Wednesday. Investors will watch whether accelerating cloud growth and AI spending at those companies can justify the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into data centres and chips.
Sources: Reuters, Reuters (Nasdaq futures report). Written in our own words for information only.