SK Hynix Earnings Miss Expectations, Stock Plunges 9% at One Point in US After-Hours Trading

TechFlow news, July 29, SK Hynix (SKHY.O) released its financial report on Wednesday. Driven by tech giants increasing investment in AI data centers, boosting strong demand for advanced memory chips, the company's second-quarter operating profit surged 557% to 60.5 trillion won (approximately $41.62 billion), setting a historical record, compared to 9.2 trillion won in the same period last year. However, this figure was lower than the market expectation of 64 trillion won, mainly because its proportion of high-end memory chips (HBM) is higher than competitors, thus failing to fully benefit from this round of strong price increase cycle for conventional memory chips. This exacerbated concerns that the AI boom driving the semiconductor industry may be slowing down.

SK Hynix's revenue also missed expectations. The financial report showed that its second-quarter revenue was 79 trillion won, while market expectations were 84 trillion won.

Affected by the financial report, SK Hynix fell another 9% in after-hours trading after closing down 9% in the US stock market on Tuesday. SanDisk (SNDK.O) and Micron Technology (MU.O) also fell more than 4%, erasing the boost brought by Seagate Technology's (STX.O) financial report.