SK hynix likely to overtake Samsung in chip business’ annual profit

SK hynix Inc., South Korea’s second-biggest chipmaker after Samsung Electronics Co., is likely to overtake the bigger rival this year for the first time in the chip business’ annual operating profit, brokerages said Sunday.

SK hynix currently dominates the market for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) semiconductors used in artificial intelligence chipsets. It is the sole HBM supplier to U.S. AI chip giant Nvidia Corp.

But Samsung Electronics lags behind its smaller rival as it still awaits quality test approval for its HBM supply to Nvidia.

Given the two chipmakers’ earnings results in the January-September period, SK hynix is expected to report an operating profit of 23.48 trillion won (US$17 billion) this year, higher than Samsung Electronics chip division’s 18 trillion won, according to brokerage firms’ earnings estimates.

In the first nine months, SK hynix’s operating profit of 15.4 trillion won already exceeded Samsung Electronics chip division’s 12 trillion won, according to brokerages’ earnings consensus.

They expected SK hynix and Samsung to post around 8 trillion won and up to 6 trillion won in operating profit in the October-December quarter, respectively.