Chipmaker SK Hynix posts record second-quarter profit on strong DRAM sales

By Heekyong Yang and Ju-min Park

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc <000660.KS> posted record second-quarter operating profit on Thursday, beating market expectations thanks to strong sales of DRAM chips for servers.

The world's No. 2 memory chipmaker said operating profit for April-June grew 83 percent to 5.6 trillion won ($5 billion) from 3.1 trillion won a year earlier.

That compared with a 5.4 trillion won Thomson Reuters StarMine SmartEstimate from a survey of 21 analysts.

Revenue for the period rose 55 percent from a year earlier to a record 10.4 trillion won, the company said.

SK Hynix stock rose 1 percent on the result, after sliding more than 7 percent since Monday on analyst forecasts of a slowdown in DRAM sector performance.

The results come as an industry-wide shift to new production technology raises market fears of oversupply that could spell the end of a cycle of strong price growth that has underpinned record profits for the past two years.

($1 = 1,115.6500 won)

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang and Ju-min Park; Editing by Stephen Coates)