SK Hynix Q2 profit jumps 557% to record, misses estimates

A record quarter that read as a miss is a specific kind of story, and SK Hynix just delivered a textbook one. CNBC reported that the Korean memory maker booked 79.32 trillion won of Q2 revenue, up 257% from a year earlier, alongside 60.54 trillion won of operating profit, up nearly 557% year on year. Both were all-time highs. Both undershot the analyst consensus of 84 trillion won on the top line and 64 trillion won on operating profit, and the ADR fell to a record low on July 28.

The interesting part is why the market punished a 557% profit jump. SK Hynix leans harder on high-end memory going into AI data centers than its peers, so it benefits less when conventional commodity DRAM and NAND rally in price. When expectations already assume you are the AI-memory pure play, a record print is the base case, not the surprise, and anything short of the whisper number gets sold.

The forward-looking piece is HBM4. In its Q2 business update, SK Hynix said HBM4 mass shipments began during the quarter and will ramp in the second half, that shipments of 10nm-class 6th-generation (1c) DRAM began in earnest, and that HBM4E sample shipments are already out. First-half revenue crossed 100 trillion won for the first time in the company's history, and the net cash position expanded to 69.4 trillion won.

The honest caveat is that the reporting does not name which customers took the first HBM4 volume, does not fully explain the revenue gap versus consensus, and does not say what SK Hynix sees for HBM pricing as Samsung pushes its own HBM4 into qualification. Those are the three questions that decide whether the H2 ramp reads as a re-rating or a deceleration.

If HBM4 lands cleanly with the big AI customers in the second half, the miss becomes a footnote. If it slips, a heavily AI-tilted revenue mix cuts both ways.