Chipmaker SK Hynix reports 64 percent jump in 1Q earnings

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — SK Hynix Inc. says its first-quarter net profit has surged 64 percent over a year earlier thanks to robust memory chip prices.

The South Korean chipmaker, which supplies to Apple, reported Tuesday a 3.1 trillion won ($2.9 billion) earnings for the January-March period, compared with 1.9 trillion won a year earlier.

The result missed market consensus of 3.3 trillion won, according to FactSet, a financial data provider.

Sales rose 39 percent to 8.7 trillion won ($8.1 billion) while operating income jumped 77 percent to 4.4 trillion won ($4.1 billion).

SK Hynix, the world’s second largest memory chipmaker after Samsung Electronics, says prices of memory chip devices called DRAM continued to show solid growth. It forecast a continued supply shortage of DRAM, which helps servers and computers run multiple programs faster.