SK hynix said on 28 October 2026, Seoul time, that it earned 83.3338 trillion won in operating profit in the third quarter, an operating margin of 80%, on revenue of 104.6155 trillion won. It is the first time the company’s quarterly revenue has passed 100 trillion won.
The memory maker also set out approximately 100 trillion won of shareholder returns for fiscal 2026, and said long-term agreements with customers now cover more than 50% of its production capacity for 2027 and 2028.
Short explainer · SK hynix 3Q26
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The key insight: As we read it, the release pairs a record quarter with a dated claim on the future: long-term agreements covering more than 50% of 2027 and 2028 capacity, by the company’s own account.
Revenue rose 32% and operating profit 38% from the second quarter, when SK hynix reported revenue of 79.3187 trillion won and operating profit of 60.5426 trillion won. A year earlier, in the third quarter of 2025, revenue was 24.4489 trillion won and operating profit 11.3834 trillion won; the company puts the year-on-year rise in operating profit at 632%.
CNBC reported that both figures beat LSEG SmartEstimates, which it said had expected revenue of 98.34 trillion won and operating profit of 76.72 trillion won.
Net profit was 39.7756 trillion won, a net margin of 38%, against 93.9226 trillion won in the second quarter, a 58% fall, according to the release’s results table. SK hynix says the results are preliminary, based on K-IFRS, and speak only as of 28 October 2026.
Korea JoongAng Daily reported that net profit of 39.78 trillion won, up 216% on-year, came in below FnGuide’s forecast of 61.29 trillion won, even as operating profit topped FnGuide’s 76.96 trillion won consensus. The release itself does not give a net-profit consensus, and neither source explains the gap in the text we read.
Cash and cash equivalents stood at 114.5 trillion won at the end of the quarter, up 26.5 trillion won, while borrowings fell by 2.8 trillion won to 15.8 trillion won, leaving net cash of 98.7 trillion won.
SK hynix revenue and operating profit, trillion won, K-IFRS: 3Q25 revenue 24.4489, operating profit 11.3834 (margin 47%); 2Q26 79.3187 and 60.5426 (76%); 3Q26 104.6155 and 83.3338 (80%). Preliminary figures. Source: SK hynix 3Q26 financial results release, 28 Oct 2026 (KST).SK hynix’s third quarter in four numbers: revenue of 104.6 trillion won, above 100 trillion won for the first time; operating profit of 83.3 trillion won, up 632% year over year; an operating margin of 80%, from 47% a year earlier; and approximately 100 trillion won of planned fiscal 2026 shareholder returns. Source: SK hynix 3Q26 financial results release, 28 Oct 2026 (KST).
What Drove It
SK hynix says prices of key products rose on growing demand for AI memory. In DRAM, it says sales of server DDR5 increased significantly while HBM4 shipments began in earnest. In NAND, it says sales of 321-layer TLC eSSD expanded.
The company says it will ramp its M15X fab to maximum capacity by the end of the year to increase HBM4 production, and expects HBM4 to surpass HBM3E in both shipment volume and revenue in the fourth quarter. The release does not give HBM’s share of DRAM revenue.
Capacity Sold Ahead
SK hynix says it has signed long-term agreements with 14 major customers, including leading global cloud service providers, and is discussing with a number of customers the possibility of extending “the contract terms, which are typically five years,” according to its release. It says the volume secured corresponds to more than 50% of total production capacity for 2027 and 2028. It says the agreements include a mechanism that reflects market conditions within a price range agreed with customers.
The company says it expects demand to exceed supply through 2030, citing the technical difficulty of leading-edge processes and the long lead time to build new fabs, and that investment is expected to increase significantly next year as its Yongin Phase 1 site enters full-scale operation.
Roughly 100 Trillion Won Back to Shareholders
SK hynix fiscal 2026 shareholder returns as stated by the company, trillion won: approximately 100 in total, of which share repurchases and cancellations of 60 or more (including 40 announced in August) and cash dividends of 30 or more; the board declared a 14 trillion won third-quarter dividend. Source: SK hynix 3Q26 results release, 28 Oct 2026 (KST).
For fiscal 2026, SK hynix says it will pursue shareholder returns totaling approximately 100 trillion won: cash dividends of 30 trillion won or more, and share repurchases and cancellations of 60 trillion won or more, including the 40 trillion won announced in August, which it says was completed last week.
Its board approved a third-quarter cash dividend of 14 trillion won, or 20,000 won per share, half of it a special dividend that shares gains from the company’s Kioxia investment, and a 20 trillion won share repurchase. SK hynix says 10 trillion won of that repurchase will be cancelled, and the remaining approximately 10 trillion won will be used for employee compensation and is not included in the shareholder return total.
What’s new: the company’s own figures, including an 80% operating margin and long-term agreements covering more than half of 2027 and 2028 capacity.
The Structural Read
As we read it, profit grew faster than sales: SK hynix says revenue rose 32% and operating profit 38% from the second quarter, and its operating margin went from 76% to 80%.
As we read it, net profit moved the other way: the release’s table shows net income of 39.7756 trillion won against 93.9226 trillion won in the second quarter; the release does not explain the gap in the text we read.
On 26 October we reported a Seoul Economic Daily account of 50 trillion to 60 trillion won of additional returns; SK hynix now states approximately 100 trillion won for fiscal 2026 including the 40 trillion won August buyback, which is our comparison.
SK hynix, third-quarter 2026 results release, 28 October 2026
“it expects the structure in which demand exceeds supply to persist through 2030”
Three Implications
FOR MEMORY BUYERS SK hynix says long-term agreements now cover more than 50% of its total production capacity for 2027 and 2028, with prices that move within an agreed range.
FOR SHAREHOLDERS The company says it will pursue approximately 100 trillion won of returns for fiscal 2026, including a 14 trillion won third-quarter dividend declared today.
FOR HBM SK hynix says it expects HBM4 to surpass HBM3E in both shipment volume and revenue in the fourth quarter.
The framework puts it this way: “Memory is becoming the new compute. HBM growth is outpacing accelerator demand, making memory the rate-limiting factor in the AI scaling equation.”
As we read it, SK hynix’s release is the supplier’s side of that constraint: an 80% operating margin and long-term agreements covering more than half of 2027 and 2028 capacity. The framework was written in December 2025 and does not discuss these results.
What Is Not Established
The release does not give HBM revenue, HBM’s share of DRAM sales, or prices per product, and it does not name the 14 customers with long-term agreements. It does not give a revenue or profit forecast for the fourth quarter. We read SK hynix’s English results release on its newsroom; we did not listen to the earnings call.
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SK hynix reported 83.3 trillion won of third-quarter operating profit at an 80% margin on 104.6 trillion won of revenue, and set approximately 100 trillion won of fiscal 2026 shareholder returns. It says long-term agreements cover more than half of its 2027 and 2028 capacity.
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A note on sourcing. Figures and descriptions are from SK hynix’s third-quarter 2026 results release on its newsroom, dated 28 October 2026 in Seoul. The company says the figures are preliminary, based on K-IFRS, and speak only as of 28 October 2026. We did not listen to the earnings call. Won amounts are not converted to dollars. This is not investment advice.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
