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US sales surge by 21 trillion won in one year due to exploding memory demand
SK Hynix achieved a 65% share of its total revenue from the US in the first quarter of this year, driven by an explosion in demand for its entire memory product lineup, including High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), from major US big tech companies.
In particular, it was found that SK Hynix recorded over 7 trillion won in sales from its largest client, Nvidia, in the first quarter alone.
Additionally, in the first quarter of this year, SK Hynix secured a new key customer, a global big tech company other than Nvidia, from which it generated over 6 trillion won in sales, surpassing 10% of its total revenue for the first time.
According to SK Hynix's quarterly report disclosed on the 15th, the US accounted for 64.7% (33.9992 trillion won) of the total domestic and international regional sales (52.5763 trillion won) in the first quarter of this year.
Compared to the US sales share of around 72% (12.7945 trillion won) in the first quarter of last year, it decreased by 7 percentage points, but the sales amount surged by over 21 trillion won.
This sales growth was primarily driven by a surge in prices of general-purpose DRAM and NAND due to supply-demand imbalance, and an expansion of memory product sales, including High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), to US big tech companies.
Among these, SK Hynix is estimated to have recorded 7.7806 trillion won in sales from 'AI giant' Nvidia in the first quarter of this year. This accounts for 14.8% of the company's total sales during the same period. Compared to the same period last year (4.7862 trillion won), sales surged by 62.6%.
SK Hynix is supplying memory semiconductors, including HBM3E (5th generation), to big tech companies including Nvidia. The next-generation product, HBM4 (6th generation), is also nearing supply.
SK Hynix stated in its earnings conference call last month, "For HBM4, we are closely collaborating with customers from the initial stages to develop products that meet their performance requirements, and we are planning to expand production volumes according to the agreed schedule." It added, "We are preparing to expand production to meet the required performance and supply it in a timely manner."
Furthermore, in the first quarter of this year, a new '10% Club' customer emerged, accounting for 12.4% of total sales (6.5365 trillion won).
Although detailed customer names were not disclosed in this announcement, the industry speculates it to be one of the global big tech companies such as Microsoft (MS) or Google.
In the first quarter of this year, China sales were 12.7966 trillion won, accounting for 24.3% of total sales.
Compared to last year's first-quarter sales (17.6391 trillion won) where it accounted for 15% (2.6943 trillion won), this is an increase of approximately 9 percentage points.
In SK Hynix's case, it is known to focus on selling server and AI products such as HBM in the US, where big tech companies are concentrated, and primarily selling mobile products like LPDDR and NAND in China.
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