New to this? Read it in simple words
- SK hynix makes memory chips that AI systems need.
- From July to September, its sales were 104.6 trillion won, a company record.
- Its operating profit rose 632% from a year earlier.
- It expects memory to stay scarce through 2030.
- HBM
- Stacked, very fast memory placed next to AI chips so they can get data quickly.
- Operating profit
- The money a company makes from its main business, before taxes and one-off gains.
- Share buyback
- When a company buys its own shares back from investors.
Three weeks after Samsung, its Korean rival also passed 100 trillion won in a single quarter. Both results rest on the same thing: AI’s demand for memory.
The numbers
SK hynix’s sales from July to September were 104.6 trillion won, up 328% from a year earlier and 32% from the quarter before. It is the first quarter in which the company passed 100 trillion won.
Operating profit, the money made from the business itself, was 83.3 trillion won, up 632% from a year earlier. That is about $62.8 billion, AFP reports. The operating margin was 80%, the highest in the company’s history, SBS News reports.
Net profit was 39.8 trillion won. It fell 58% from the second quarter, which had large one-off gains from SK hynix’s stake in the Japanese memory maker Kioxia. All the figures are preliminary until the audit is finished.
From SK hynix’s preliminary results of October 28, 2026.
Sold out for years
SK hynix says supply is “not keeping pace with the growth of the market.” It “expects the structure in which demand exceeds supply to persist through 2030,” the company wrote. That is its own forecast.
It says long-term contracts already cover more than half of its production capacity for 2027 and 2028. The Register reports that 14 large customers signed them, including big cloud companies. The company did not name them.
HBM is the stacked memory that sits next to AI chips such as Nvidia’s. SK hynix expects its newest kind, HBM4, to pass the older HBM3E in both shipments and sales in the fourth quarter.
Money back to shareholders
The company plans to return about 100 trillion won to shareholders for 2026. That includes at least 30 trillion won in dividends and at least 60 trillion won in share buybacks.
For the third quarter, it will pay 20,000 won per share. Half of that is a special dividend that shares the Kioxia gains, SK hynix says.
“Our principle has been to share the majority of the gains from successful strategic investments with our shareholders,” chief executive Kwak Noh-Jung said in the release.
Sources
Every fact in this story comes from the sources below. Open them to check our work.
- 1
- 2Research · October 28, 2026SK hynix operating profit up 632% on-year in third quarter: company AFP, via The Daily Star
- 3Research · October 28, 2026SK Hynix Surpasses 100 Trillion Won in Quarterly Sales for First Time… Operating Profit Margin at 80% SBS News
- 4
- 5Research · October 28, 2026SK hynix Stock Jumps 8% as It Confirms $75 Billion in Shareholder Returns, With $26 Billion Still to Come Yahoo Finance
The results are SK hynix’s preliminary figures, and the shortage until 2030 is its own forecast. One outlet printed a different operating profit, so we use the company’s number.
SK hynix sales pass 100 trillion won on AI memory demand. Silicon AI News, October 28, 2026. https://siliconainews.com/stories/sk-hynix-q3-2026-record-results
SK hynix posted record quarterly sales above 100 trillion won, with operating profit up 632% on AI memory demand. How we rate the mood
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