SK Hynix said on Wednesday it recorded first-quarter revenue of 52.6 trillion won and operating profit of 37.6 trillion won. Revenue rose 198 percent from a year earlier and operating profit jumped 405 percent, with an operating margin of 72 percent.

Quarterly revenue topped 50 trillion won for the first time. Operating profit and the operating margin also marked the company’s highest since its founding, at 37.6 trillion won and 72 percent, respectively. Operating profit surged to about double the previous quarter’s level.

Despite the seasonal off-peak period, expanded AI infrastructure investment supported strong demand, the company said. It cited higher sales of high value-added products such as HBM (high bandwidth memory), high-capacity server DRAM modules and eSSD (enterprise solid-state drives) as the direct driver of the earnings rise.

Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the first quarter stood at 54.3 trillion won, up 19.4 trillion won from the end of the previous quarter. Borrowings fell 2.9 trillion won to 19.3 trillion won, resulting in net cash of 35.0 trillion won.

The company said it sees the memory demand base expanding across DRAM and NAND as AI evolves into the agentic AI stage. It cited a shift in AI use from large-model training to real-time inference across diverse service environments.

It also said the spread of memory efficiency technologies is improving the economics of AI services and expanding overall service scale, which in turn further drives memory demand. It expects favourable pricing conditions to continue for both DRAM and NAND.

In DRAM, the company said it began mass production this month of LPDDR6 using the world’s first 10-nanometre-class sixth-generation (1c) process, and of 192GB SOCAMM2 based on the same process. For HBM, it said it will focus on strengthening execution capabilities integrating performance, yield, quality and supply stability.

In NAND, it said it began supplying the cSSD "PQC21" applying 321-layer QLC (quadruple level cell) technology based on CTF (charge trap flash). It said it plans to respond to AI demand with a lineup spanning high-performance TLC (triple level cell) and high-capacity QLC across the full eSSD range, and to strengthen competitiveness in AI data centre and AI PC storage markets through synergy with Solidigm.

The company said this year’s investment is expected to rise sharply from the previous year due to the ramp-up of M15X, infrastructure preparations for the Yongin cluster and securing EUV (extreme ultraviolet) equipment. It said securing supply capacity has emerged as a key competitive edge in an environment where customer demand exceeds supply capability.

An SK Hynix official said the company will strategically expand its production base to proactively respond to mid- to long-term demand growth. The official said it will secure both supply stability and financial soundness through investment that takes demand visibility into account.