SK Hynix’s ‘Cash Reserves’ Grow by Over 20 Trillion Won in One Year Due to Its Sales to Nvidia Sales Reaches 23 Trillion Won
SK hynix’ HBM3 on Nvidia H100 GPU. (photo courtesy of Nvidia)
SK Hynix significantly improved its financial soundness amid explosive earnings growth last year, led by High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and commodity DRAM.
In just one year, cash and cash equivalents increased by more than 20 trillion won (approximately $13 billion), surpassing borrowings, while the United States’ share of the company’s total sales approached 70%.
According to the ‘2025 Business Report’ disclosed by SK Hynix on March 17, the company’s cash and cash equivalents stood at 34 trillion 942.3 billion won as of the end of last year. Compared to 2024 (14 trillion 156.4 billion won), this represents an increase of 146.8% (20 trillion 785.9 billion won).
In contrast, the scale of borrowings decreased. SK Hynix’s borrowings last year totaled 22 trillion 247.9 billion won, a decrease of approximately 435.8 billion won from the previous year. During the same period, the debt-to-equity ratio also declined from 62.15% to 45.95%.
Previously, SK Hynix achieved ‘net cash’—where cash and cash equivalents exceed borrowings—in the third quarter of last year for the first time since entering a net debt position in the second quarter of 2019.
In addition, during the fourth quarter of last year, the company expanded sales of commodity DRAM and NAND products riding the price uptrend, along with HBM, resulting in cash increasing by approximately 7 trillion won in just one quarter.
SK Hynix’s cash and cash equivalents stood at 27 trillion 854.4 billion won through the third quarter of last year.
This trend was largely influenced by strong performance in the United States, where major Big Tech companies such as Nvidia, AMD, Google, and Meta are concentrated.
According to the business report, ‘SK hynix America,’ the U.S. sales subsidiary, recorded sales of 58 trillion 693.3 billion won and net profit of 235.9 billion won last year. This represents a 75.4% increase from the previous year’s sales (33 trillion 459 billion won).
Looking at sales by region, the growth of U.S. business is notable. Sales generated in the United States (from U.S. customers), including the U.S. sales subsidiary, amounted to 66 trillion 885.1 billion won last year, accounting for 68.9% of the company’s total sales (approximately 97 trillion won) for the year.
Compared to the period from 2020 to 2023, when the U.S. share of SK Hynix’s total sales ranged from 39% to 53%, this represents remarkable growth.
China business also achieved a sales increase of approximately 3.6 trillion won between 2024 (15 trillion 533.6 billion won) and 2025 (19 trillion 136.2 billion won), but during the same period, the United States surpassed 47 trillion won, significantly outpacing China.
In China, SK Hynix is reported to primarily sell mobile products such as LPDDR and NAND.
Meanwhile, SK Hynix is estimated to have generated sales of 23 trillion 260.1 billion won from Nvidia, the ‘AI big spender,’ last year. This represents 23.9% of the company’s total sales during the same period.
As Nvidia’s core partner, SK Hynix supplies the majority of HBM3E (5th generation) volumes, and is known to have been allocated more than two-thirds of Nvidia’s volumes for the next-generation HBM4 (6th generation).
Meanwhile, the number of minority shareholders of SK Hynix totaled 1,186,328 as of the end of last year. This represents an increase of 405,461 from the end of the previous year (780,867).
Kim Eun-jin
pr@businesskorea.co.kr
View More Article
Copyright © BusinessKorea. Prohibited from unauthorized reproduction and redistribution
댓글
0