SEOUL, Jan 28 (Reuters) - South Korea's SK Hynix said on Wednesday that quarterly profit more than doubled to a record, comfortably beating forecasts on relentless demand for artificial intelligence that has lifted prices for both advanced and conventional memory chips.
The Nvidia supplier logged a 137% surge in operating profit to 19.2 trillion won ($13.5 billion) for the fourth quarter, according to Reuters calculations.
That compared with 8.1 trillion won a year earlier and a 17.7 trillion won consensus
prediction from LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward analysts with a more consistent track record.
SK Hynix will hold a briefing on its fourth-quarter earnings results on Thursday.
SK Hynix has managed to carve out an enviable lead in high bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence chipsets designed by the likes of Nvidia, commanding a 61% share of the HBM market, according to Macquarie Equity Research.
It is also benefiting as tight supply and rising AI demand push up prices for commodity DRAM and NAND chips used in servers, personal computers and mobile devices.
For example, contract prices for 16 gigabyte DDR5, a popular type of DRAM chip, more than quadrupled last quarter from a year earlier, according to market tracker TrendForce.
TrendForce expects conventional DRAM contract prices to rise a further 55% to 60% in the current quarter from the previous one.
($1 = 1,422.2400 won)
(Reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Edwina Gibbs)
