SK Hynix, one of the world's biggest memory chip makers, just posted the most profitable quarter in its history, and its shares jumped about 11% in Seoul. The reason is AI: data centers are buying every memory chip SK Hynix can make. The company says its memory production is essentially booked through 2029. Great news for shareholders, but not for anyone hoping RAM gets cheaper soon.

This is news, not financial advice. Do your own research before buying or selling any stock.

The numbers

SK Hynix reported its third-quarter results (July to September) on Wednesday, October 28:

  • Operating profit: about 83.3 trillion won (around $60 billion), up 632% from a year ago and 38% from the previous quarter. That's above the roughly 77 trillion won analysts expected.
  • Revenue: a record 104.6 trillion won, the first time the company has topped 100 trillion won in a single quarter.
  • Operating margin: about 80%, which means roughly 80 cents of every dollar of sales turned into operating profit. That's extremely high for a chip maker.
  • Shares: closed about 11% higher on the day.

What's driving it: AI memory

AI chips, like the ones Nvidia sells to data centers, need a special, very fast type of memory called HBM (high-bandwidth memory). SK Hynix is one of the leading makers of it. Its newest version, HBM4, entered full-scale mass production in the third quarter.

The company says its DRAM and HBM output is effectively sold out through 2029. In other words, big customers have already reserved years of future production.

Why gamers should care

Memory factories can only make so much. When makers like SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron shift production toward expensive AI memory, there's less left for regular RAM, the kind that goes into gaming PCs, laptops and graphics cards.

That's why PC builders have watched RAM prices climb sharply over the past year. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has said he expects the memory price crunch to stick around, and research firms don't expect real relief before 2027 at the earliest, when new factories start coming online.

So if you're planning a PC upgrade, today's numbers are a hint: the companies making the memory have no reason to cut prices while AI customers are paying top dollar. And speaking of expensive hardware, here's what the next Xbox might cost.

What it means for the stock market

SK Hynix's results are another sign the AI spending boom is still going strong. That matters today because Microsoft and Alphabet report earnings after the US market closes, and investors want to know whether Big Tech will keep spending billions on AI data centers. Those data centers are exactly what SK Hynix's chips go into.

Earlier this week we also covered Robinhood's earnings, where crypto trading dropped while other businesses grew.

My take

An 80% margin on hardware is wild. Memory used to be a boom-and-bust business, and right now it's a very big boom. For investors, SK Hynix is printing money. For PC gamers, it's the reason that new RAM kit costs what it does, and it doesn't look like that changes soon. Are you holding off on a PC upgrade because of memory prices?

Sources

  1. CNBC: SK Hynix shares jump 11% after record quarterly profit cnbc.com
  2. Korea JoongAng Daily: SK hynix says DRAM, HBM booked through 2029 as profit soars koreajoongangdaily.com
  3. Quartz: SK Hynix reports record Q3 2026 profit qz.com
  4. Bloomingbit: SK Hynix says three years of DRAM, HBM output sold out en.bloomingbit.io
  5. Tom's Hardware: HBM is eating your RAM tomshardware.com
  6. Notebookcheck: Tim Sweeney says the RAM price crisis is here to stay notebookcheck.net

Written by the WIZY creator

An independent builder on Monad, working on the WIZY project and the WIZY RPG game. I write about crypto in plain English and about the games I care about, and I check every fact against its source.

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