SK hynix Announces 2Q26 Financial Results
2Q26 operating margin 76% on KRW 79.32tn revenue (+257% YoY), operating profit KRW 60.54tn (+557%); HBM4 mass shipments began in Q2; LTAs with ~10 customers. Memory scarcity stated as a margin, not a capability spec.
SK hynix — 2Q26 Financial Results
Lead
SK hynix reported an all-time-high quarter on K-IFRS, attributing it to sustained AI-infrastructure demand. The number that matters to this rung is not the revenue but the 76% operating margin — a figure that does not occur in a commodity industry unless the product is scarce.
Key Figures
| Metric | 2Q26 | QoQ | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | KRW 79.3187tn | +51% | +257% |
| Operating profit | KRW 60.5426tn | +61% | +557% |
| Operating margin | 76% | +4pp | — |
| Net income | KRW 93.9226tn | +133% | +1,242% |
Balance sheet: cash and equivalents KRW 88tn (up KRW 33.6tn from Q1); total debt KRW 18.6tn (down KRW 0.7tn); net cash KRW 69.4tn.
Key contributions
- HBM4 moved from sampling to revenue. Mass shipments began in Q2 2026, with production ramp planned for H2 2026. SK hynix claims HBM4 "achiev[ed] customer-required operating speeds while delivering industry-leading power efficiency and cost competitiveness."
- Demand is contracted, not spot. Long-Term Agreements were finalised with around 10 customers, including named strategic partners, with further discussions open. This is the detail that separates a scarcity cycle from a price spike: LTAs move the revenue forward in time and reduce the odds of a cliff.
- DRAM mix, not DRAM volume, drove the margin. High-value AI server products are credited with both price increases and profitability.
- NAND is on a separate track. 321-layer products are the largest production share; ~50% domestic capacity transition planned by year-end; M15X mass production accelerating, with Yongin Phase 1 cleanroom opening in early 2027.
- Stated capex discipline alongside capacity reinforcement — the company is explicitly not claiming it will build into the margin.
Why it is on this rung, and how it relates to the rung's other HBM4 entries
The existing HBM4 material here (HW1/HW2, the architectural shakeup file, the TrendForce outlook) is capability data — bandwidth, pin speed, stack height. This is the price-power data. A 76% operating margin is the memory-scarcity claim made quantitative: it says buyers are not price-setting. It is also the direct feed into the memory-scarcity leg of inference-economics, and the empirical counterpart to the Matsuoka scenario paper already on this rung (memory-scarcity-2607.07207-closeread.md), which assumes exactly this kind of pricing power persists into 2027.
Limitations
- Preliminary and unaudited as of 2026-07-29. Every figure is subject to change on independent audit.
- Net income exceeds revenue (KRW 93.9tn vs KRW 79.3tn), which means non-operating items — equity-method gains, valuation or FX effects — dominate the bottom line. Do not cite net income as an operating result; the operating margin is the clean number.
- This is the single most date-sensitive figure in the rung. A 76% margin in a memory cycle is a peak-shaped number by construction. Always cite it at its as-of quarter (2Q26) and never as a run-rate.
- Issuer disclosure, not an independent measurement: the HBM4 quality claims ("industry-leading power efficiency and cost competitiveness") are unbenchmarked marketing language and must not be carried forward as findings.
- No per-GB HBM price is disclosed here, and none exists in primary form anywhere — which is precisely why the scarcity argument has to be made on margins.
Source: SK hynix, "SK hynix Announces 2Q26 Financial Results", 2026-07-29.