{"id":659339,"date":"2026-10-28T06:52:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T06:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/659339\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T06:52:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T06:52:20","slug":"south-koreas-ai-trade-roars-back-as-chip-profits-soar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/659339\/","title":{"rendered":"South Korea’s AI Trade Roars Back As Chip Profits Soar"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Korea’s AI trade<\/a> got another boost from blockbuster SK Hynix earnings, as the chipmaker showed just how profitable the boom has become.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the benchmark Kospi index<\/a> surged as much as 6%, extending Tuesday’s gains of more than 3%. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix rallied as much as 10% and 9%, respectively.<\/p>\n

The rebound follows a turbulent year for South Korean stocks,<\/a> which have swung sharply amid the AI boom and concerns about the sustainability of massive infrastructure spending. As of Tuesday’s close, SK Hynix shares<\/a> had lost more than half their value since a June record high and were down nearly 25% this month.<\/p>\n

Sentiment has rebounded this week, helped by Anthropic’s blockbuster IPO filing and a renewed rally in US technology shares.<\/p>\n

SK Hynix’s latest results gave investors another reason for optimism.<\/p>\n

The world’s second-largest memory chipmaker reported third-quarter operating profit of 83.3 trillion won, or $62 billion, up 632% from a year earlier. Revenue rose 328% to a record 104.6 trillion won.<\/p>\n

The record results were driven by surging demand for AI memory chips, including high-bandwidth memory used in AI infrastructure, and rising memory prices.<\/p>\n

That windfall is increasingly making its way to shareholders.<\/p>\n

SK Hynix announced additional shareholder returns, bringing its planned dividends and share buybacks for this year to approximately 100 trillion won, or $75 billion. The total includes buybacks announced earlier, while some of the returns are being funded by gains from its investment in Japanese chipmaker Kioxia.<\/p>\n

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The company is also seeing signs that the demand driving its record profits could endure.<\/p>\n

SK Hynix said it had secured long-term agreements with 14 major customers, including global cloud providers, covering more than half its production capacity for 2027 and 2028.<\/p>\n

“The customer trust built through our technological competitiveness is leading to long-term contracts, and our business structure is transforming into one with earnings stability and mid-to-long term demand visibility,” CEO Kwak Noh-Jung said in the company’s earnings announcement.<\/p>\n

Investors will get further insight into the strength of the memory-chip market in the coming days, with Samsung Electronics scheduled to report its full third-quarter results on Thursday, followed by Japan’s Kioxia on Friday and China’s CXMT on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Korea’s AI trade got another boost from blockbuster SK Hynix earnings, as the chipmaker showed just how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[220393,29501,114,296772,119759,1259,16772,17984,85,9445,46,10067,349,71979,11471,27403,296771,113924],"class_list":["post-659339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-ai-trade","tag-boom","tag-business","tag-buyback","tag-chipmaker","tag-company","tag-demand","tag-gain","tag-il","tag-investor","tag-israel","tag-record","tag-samsung-electronics","tag-sk-hynix","tag-south-korea","tag-tuesday","tag-turbulent-year","tag-won"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}