The Quarter in Brief
SK hynix, the South Korean maker of memory chips, including the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in AI accelerators, reported its third quarter of 2026, the three months ended September 30, on October 28, Seoul time. The figures are preliminary and in Korean won, under Korean accounting standards (K-IFRS). Revenue was 104.6 trillion won, up 328% from 24.4 trillion a year earlier and the first quarter above 100 trillion. Operating profit was 83.3 trillion won, up 632%, a margin of 79.7% of revenue.
Both were ahead of expectations: analysts had expected about 98.2 trillion won of revenue and 77.0 trillion of operating profit, according to FnGuide's average of brokers' forecasts. What set the quarter apart was price. The company says the average selling price of its DRAM (the working memory in servers and computers) rose in the high 20s per cent from the second quarter, and that of its NAND (the flash memory in solid-state drives) in the mid-20s, while its costs rose far more slowly. Net profit to shareholders was 39.5 trillion won, up 214% from a year earlier, held back by 32.6 trillion won of losses below operating profit, mostly on currency and the value of investments.