Key points
- Operating profit was 60.5426 trillion won ($41.6 billion USD) against a 64.09 trillion won consensus, and revenue 79.3187 trillion won ($54.6 billion USD) against 84.06 trillion won. Both came in about 5.5% short, and both are still company records, with operating profit up 557% from a year earlier.
- The margin was not the problem. Operating margin came in at 76%, right where consensus had it, so the entire miss was revenue.
- Korea Investment & Securities was the only firm below the pack at 60.4 trillion won, and came within a quarter of a percent of the actual number.
- Net profit was 93.9226 trillion won ($64.6 billion USD), larger than revenue. The release does not explain it.
- SKHY rallied to $135.75 after the closing bell, was $119.56 fifteen minutes after the numbers landed, and was back to $126.48 by 7:30 p.m. ET. Micron (MU) and Sandisk (SNDK) broke in the same minute.
Timing note: Seoul runs 13 hours ahead of New York. SK Hynix released these results on the morning of Wednesday, July 29 in Seoul, which was the evening of Tuesday, July 28 in New York. Every date and clock time below is labeled with its time zone.
SK Hynix reported the best quarter in its history on Wednesday morning in Seoul and came in under what analysts had penciled in for it.
Revenue was 79.3187 trillion won ($54.6 billion USD) and operating profit was 60.5426 trillion won ($41.6 billion USD) for April through June, against analyst figures of 84.06 trillion won ($57.8 billion USD) and 64.09 trillion won ($44.1 billion USD). That leaves revenue 5.6% short and operating profit 5.5% short, on numbers that are still company records by a distance. Operating profit is up 557% from the 9.2129 trillion won ($6.3 billion USD) SK Hynix earned in the same quarter of 2025 and up 61% from the first quarter of this year, with revenue up 257% year over year. We wrote on Sunday that even the lowest forecast on the street beat what the company earned in all of 2025, and that held, since it made more in three months than it did in the previous twelve. The shortfall against expectations is what the tape traded on anyway.
The margin was fine, they just sold less
SK Hynix converted 76 won of every 100 won of sales into operating profit, against a consensus that implied 76.2%, and the company's own release puts the operating margin at 76%. On profitability the quarter landed where the street had modeled it, which means costs held and pricing held. What the company did not do was sell as much as analysts expected, coming up roughly 4.7 trillion won ($3.2 billion USD) short on revenue, and at a 76% margin about three quarters of that shortfall falls straight through to the profit line.
The two failure modes read very differently to anyone holding the stock. A margin that slipped would point to the memory cycle turning over. A volume shortfall points to shipments running behind what people assumed, which is a smaller problem, and one the company says it is already oversubscribed against.
One analyst had it, and he had the reason too
Thirteen of the fourteen brokerages in the Yonhap Infomax survey clustered around 64 trillion won. Chae Min-suk at Korea Investment & Securities published 60.4 trillion won ($41.5 billion USD) on July 13, roughly 8% under everyone else, on revenue of 80.9 trillion won ($55.6 billion USD). Operating profit came in at 60.5426 trillion won, putting him within a quarter of a percent, and his revenue call was within 2%.
His reasoning got there as well. Chae argued that SK Hynix already sells so much high bandwidth memory, the expensive product, that it had less room to reprice than competitors selling the ordinary kind. "HBM sales concentration versus competitors resulted in ASP growth trailing market averages," he wrote, using the industry shorthand for average selling price. He estimated ordinary DRAM prices rose about 30% from the first quarter and NAND about 50%, and a company already weighted toward the costly product captures less of that than one selling a cheaper mix.
A revenue miss at an in-line margin is precisely the shape that thesis predicts. He also kept his buy rating and a 3.8 million won ($2,614 USD) target while cutting his numbers, which is worth knowing before anyone reads the miss as a downgrade of the business.
Net profit came in larger than revenue
The strangest line in the release is one almost nobody will lead with. SK Hynix reported 93.9226 trillion won ($64.6 billion USD) of net profit on 79.3187 trillion won ($54.6 billion USD) of revenue. The company states the net margin as 118%.
Net profit above revenue requires a very large gain from something outside the memory business, and the release does not break it out. There is no mention of non-operating income, equity method gains, investment revaluation, deferred tax or currency effects anywhere in it. What the release does say is that cash and equivalents rose 33.6 trillion won ($23.1 billion USD) during the quarter to 88 trillion won ($60.5 billion USD), with total debt down to 18.6 trillion won ($12.8 billion USD) and a net cash position of 69.4 trillion won ($47.7 billion USD). The gap between operating and net profit is 33.4 trillion won ($23.0 billion USD). The release does not connect those two figures, and we are not going to connect them for it.
One thing is worth saying plainly about it. The quarter closed on June 30. Anything in that number carried at a market price was carried at a June 30 price, which is before the memory selloff that has run through July.
What the tape did
SKHY, the Nasdaq-listed receipt, had already been through a bad Tuesday. It closed the regular session at $130.17, down 8.98%, on the same Korea-led memory selloff that halted trading on the Kospi.
Then it started climbing. By 6:05 p.m. ET it had recovered to $135.75, up 4.3% from the close, and it held there for half an hour.
The numbers hit the wire in Seoul on Wednesday morning local time, which was about 6:40 p.m. ET Tuesday. The English release carried a 6:56 p.m. ET timestamp. In the fifteen minutes after 6:40, SKHY went from $135.71 to $119.56, a fall of 11.9%. It had recovered to $126.48 by 7:30 p.m. ET, which is 2.8% below the regular close and 6.8% below where it sat before the print.
Micron (MU) and Sandisk (SNDK) broke in the same five-minute bar. Micron went from $832.53 to $774.20 and was $804.00 at 7:30 p.m. ET against an $820.53 close. Sandisk went from $1,128.00 to $1,035.50 and was $1,085.00 against a $1,096.10 close. Neither company reported anything. They fell because SK Hynix reported, which is a reasonable read given that Sandisk shares its NAND plants with Kioxia and Micron sells into the same AI memory demand.
One SK Hynix release moved the entire US memory complex after the bell. That is the more useful fact in all of this.
What the company said about the part that actually matters
The reported quarter is history. The question going in was duration, meaning how much of this revenue is locked up rather than sold at whatever the spot price happens to be.
SK Hynix addressed it directly. It says it has finalized long-term agreements with around 10 customers, including key strategic partners, and is in further discussions with other major clients. It began mass shipments of HBM4 in the second quarter and will ramp production in the second half. HBM4E finished sample shipments in the first half.
On spending, the language is restraint. The company says it will "reinforce both its production capacity and financial health by seamlessly preparing for mid-to-long-term growth opportunities while maintaining capital expenditure discipline." That is a deliberate contrast with the American hyperscalers, whose capital spending announcements have become reasons to sell them rather than reasons to own them.
It also says that as major technology companies increase their AI infrastructure spending, "additional supply requests continue to mount," and that because those investments are funded out of the revenue customers earn from AI services, "the momentum in memory demand is expected to persist."
What to watch
Seoul opens at 9 a.m. KST, which is 8 p.m. ET Tuesday. The Seoul line closed Tuesday at 1,550,000 won ($1,066 USD), down 14.65%, before any of this was public. That session was a reaction to Chinese memory supply, not to these numbers, and the two have not yet been priced together.
One footnote on the half-year milestone. SK Hynix says first half revenue crossed 100 trillion won for the first time, and it did, at 131.895 trillion won ($90.7 billion USD). First half operating profit came in at 98.1529 trillion won ($67.5 billion USD), just under the same round number. On the consensus figure it would have cleared it.
Sources
- Revenue, operating profit, net profit, margins, cash and debt, long-term agreements with around 10 customers, HBM4 mass shipments and the capital expenditure language: SK hynix 2Q26 financial results release, July 28, 2026
- Consensus of 64.09 trillion won operating profit on 84.06 trillion won revenue, from 14 brokerages: Yonhap Infomax survey, via our July 26 preview
- Korea Investment & Securities estimate of 60.4 trillion won on 80.9 trillion won revenue, the ASP quote and the 3.8 million won target: Chae Min-suk report dated July 13, 2026, via Seoul Economic Daily (Korean language)
- SKHY, MU and SNDK after-hours prices: Nasdaq five-minute data, July 28, 2026
- Won converted at 1,453.69 to the dollar, the rate on July 28, 2026
This is general market commentary and opinion, not investment advice. Markets can go down as well as up, and you can lose money. Always do your own research and consider speaking with a licensed financial professional before making any investment decision.
