SK hynix's growth in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) business in the first quarter of this year helped the company's revenue from the United States exceed 70% of its total sales.
According to the quarterly report disclosed by SK hynix on the 15th, the total revenue for the first quarter of this year was 17.6391 trillion won, with the United States accounting for 72% (12.7945 trillion won). This is an increase of 22 percentage points compared to the 50% share of sales from the United States (6.3126 trillion won) in the first quarter of last year.
This is a result of the growing demands for AI-related memory products such as HBM, corporations' solid-state drives (SSD), and DDR5, alongside the growth of the artificial intelligence (AI) market.
SK hynix has already sold all of its HBM volume for this year and is supplying its flagship product, HBM3E (5th generation) 12-layer memory, to major customers like NVIDIA. SK hynix noted during last month's earnings conference call that "sales of the HBM3E 12-layer product have expanded as planned, resulting in continuous revenue growth."
The 12-layer HBM4 (6th generation) product, which is targeted for mass production in the second half of this year, has also completed sample supply to major customers for the first time in the world. The volume for next year is also expected to sell out soon.
In the first quarter of this year, revenue from China was 2.6943 trillion won, accounting for 15% of total sales. This represents an 18 percentage point decrease compared to the same period last year when the share was 33% (4.091 trillion won). While the proportion of AI memory sales in the U.S. market increased significantly, the demand for mobile products sold in China has declined. SK hynix is said to be focusing on selling server and AI products, such as HBM, primarily in the U.S. market, while mainly selling mobile products like LPDDR and NAND in the Chinese market.