SK Hynix fourth-quarter profit sets new record on firm memory demand
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean memory chip maker SK Hynix Inc said on Wednesday its October-December operating profit more than doubled to a quarterly record high, boosted by healthy demand from servers and new smartphones launched by Apple Inc.
SK Hynix, the world's second largest maker of DRAM chips used in personal computers and smartphones, said its DRAM shipments rose 18 percent from the previous quarter while the average selling price fell by 3 percent.
Shipments for NAND chips used primarily for data storage rose 30 percent while their average price fell 8 percent.
Memory chip makers have been booking higher profits in recent quarters thanks to better-than-expected demand for personal computers and data servers as well as careful capacity management across the industry.
The South Korean firm, which competes with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Micron Technology Inc, reported an operating profit of 1.7 trillion won (1 billion pounds), slightly above the mean forecast of 1.6 trillion won tipped by a Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S survey of 37 analysts.
Revenue grew 52.9 percent from a year earlier to 5.1 trillion won, another quarterly record.
SK Hynix and rival Samsung have said they expect the memory chips market to remain healthy in 2015, and both have ruled out the possibility of a major ramp-up in production capacity or a price war.
SK Hynix could also benefit from rival Micron's troubles.
The U.S. company has guided for a decline in DRAM production in its fiscal second quarter as it reconfigures production lines with improved technology, and analysts say the South Korean firm could end up seeing more orders as a result.
The weakening of the South Korean won will also give an additional boost to SK Hynix's earnings for the year, analysts say. The currency fell by about 4 percent against the U.S. dollar in 2014.
(Reporting by Se Young Lee; Editing by Miral Fahmy)
