Triple Crown
SK Hynix, which joined SK Group in February 2012, achieved its highest-ever annual figures for sales, gross operating profit, and net profit in 2013.
The Korean chip-maker announced on January 28 that it posted 14.165 trillion won (US$13.228 billion) in sales and 3.38 trillion won (US$3.16 billion) in operating profits last year.
Its operating profit in 2013 passed the three trillion won mark for the first time, after experiencing losses of 227.3 billion won (US$212.3 million) in 2012. Sales also grew 39.4% last year from a year ago (10.1622 trillion won, US$9.4903 billion), and the net profit topped 2.873 trillion won (US$2.6830 billion).
In particular, the world’s second-largest memory chip manufacturer recorded 23.9% last year as its operating profit margin, beating Samsung’s semiconductor business unit (18.4%) for the first time in seven years.
Thanks to a positive trend in performance, the memory chip maker’s financial stability was vastly improved. Cashable assets held by SK Hynix totaled 2.786 trillion won (US$2.5974 billion) as of late 2013, a year-on-year increase of 1 trillion won, whereas its debt equaled 4.55 trillion won (US$4.2492 billion) at the end of last year, down 1.9 trillion won (US$1.8 billion) from the previous year.
The Korean company is planning to focus on generating profits by quickly responding to the fast-changing market this year, together with qualitative growth, beyond quantitative growth.
It is also going to reduce the gap in supply periods between 20nm mid-class DRAM for PCs and mobile phones and to strengthen the lineup of mobile DRAM.
Moreover, SK Hynix is aiming at maintaining its competitive advantage in technology. It will do so by supplying prototypes of DDR4 in a timely manner, which will be used in servers this year, and by releasing high-bandwidth memory where through-silicon via (TSV) semiconductor technology is applied.
The memory chip maker also announced its plan to inject 4 trillion won (US$3.7 billion) into facilities this year. The number for 2014 is up nearly 500 billion won from 2013 (3.56 trillion won, US$3.32 billion, costs for the restoration of its plant in Wuxi included).
The firm will make large-scale investments in building new lines to replace old facilities at its plants in Icheon City, as announced at the end of last year.