SK Hynix delivered another quarter of surging profit, but the numbers still fell short of market expectations. The company said second-quarter operating profit rose 557% year over year, and its ADRs dropped 6% in after-hours trading after the earnings release, falling to $121.
According to the company’s earnings report, SK Hynix posted KRW 60.54 trillion in operating profit for the second quarter, up 557% from a year earlier. Revenue came in at KRW 79.32 trillion, up 257%. First-half revenue also exceeded KRW 100 trillion for the first time, setting a company record.
Even so, the quarter missed analyst forecasts. Market expectations had placed operating profit near KRW 64.2 trillion, leaving the reported figure short by nearly KRW 4 trillion. Revenue consensus stood at KRW 83.9 trillion, which the company also missed. The report noted that the gap between KRW 60.5 trillion and KRW 64.2 trillion was less than 10%, but the ADR still fell 6% in after-hours trading.
Net profit was a brighter point in the release. SK Hynix said net profit jumped 1,242% from a year earlier, beating market expectations. The company also said the gain was mainly driven by one-off investment income, not by recurring profitability in its core business.
Multi-year contracts failed to steady the stock
SK Hynix also disclosed that it had signed multi-year contracts with about 10 customers. In the report, those agreements were described as a traditional signal of improved order visibility, since cloud companies are no longer buying in batch-by-batch fashion but are instead locking in production capacity years in advance in exchange for stable supply.
For suppliers, that extends visibility from a single quarter to several years. The article said SK Hynix’s latest deals with around 10 customers effectively helped secure part of its revenue pipeline for the coming years, but that was not enough to reassure the market.
After the Korean market opened, SK Hynix shares briefly rebounded and then turned lower again. By the time of writing, the stock was down 7.68%. Samsung Electronics also fell 3.68% during intraday trading.
Investors are looking past one quarter’s profit
The report said SK Hynix’s strong quarter was powered by HBM, one of the most sought-after components in the current AI boom. Together with DRAM used in AI servers and enterprise SSDs, those products supported a higher-value revenue mix in the quarter.
But the market is no longer focused only on how much the company made in one quarter. The bigger question is how long those profit levels can be sustained. That is why the company’s multi-year contracts have drawn attention: they are seen as more valuable than a single quarter’s result because they point to future revenue visibility.
At the same time, bearish views have not disappeared. The report said several brokerages, including Mirae Asset Securities, have lowered their second-quarter profit estimates for SK Hynix in recent weeks, citing slower growth in chip average selling prices. It also said that as leverage across technology companies rises, downstream cloud operators and device makers may face cost pressure. If that happens, output cuts in end products such as PCs and smartphones could follow, leaving memory demand less rigid than some investors had hoped.