According to South Korean securities firms, SK Hynix's third quarter revenue is expected to reach KRW 18 trillion (approximately USD 13.4 billion), a month on month increase of 9.6% and a year-on-year increase of 98.5%. Operating profit is expected to be KRW 6.76 trillion (approximately USD 5.04 billion), a month on month increase of 23.6%.
The latest profit guidance released by Samsung Electronics shows that its consolidated sales in the third quarter were approximately KRW 79 trillion (approximately USD 58.63 billion), a month on month increase of 6.66% and a year-on-year increase of 17.21%; The comprehensive operating profit was approximately 9.1 trillion Korean won (approximately 6.75 billion US dollars), a decrease of 12.83% compared to the previous period and a year-on-year increase of 274.49%. The market expects its DS department's operating profit to be 5.3 trillion Korean won (approximately 3.93 billion US dollars), a decrease of 17.8% compared to the previous period.
By comparison, it can be seen that SK Hynix's operating profit in the third quarter will once again surpass Samsung Electronics' DS business. In the first quarter of this year, the operating profit of Samsung Electronics' DS division turned positive to KRW 1.91 trillion, but not as high as SK Hynix's KRW 2.89 trillion, which is also the second highest in the same period since 2018.
The sluggish performance of Samsung Electronics' semiconductor business is mainly due to the inventory adjustment of smartphones and personal computers, which has slowed down the cycle of general storage products. Among them, the deficit impact of system LSI and foundry business is particularly significant.
Despite market conditions such as a slowdown in general storage cycles, SK Hynix is still expected to improve its performance with HBM products. SK Hynix was the first to supply 8-layer HBM3E to NVIDIA at the beginning of this year, and began mass production of 12 layer HBM3E products in September, with the goal of supplying customers within the year. SK Hynix stated during its Q2 earnings conference that HBM3E sales have significantly increased since Q2 of this year, and it is expected that HBM3E bit shipments will surpass HBM3 in the third quarter, accounting for over 50% of HBM's total sales this year.