SK Hynix recorded its highest revenue since its founding by striving to actively supply products in response to the increased demand for non-face-to-face IT in 2021.

SK Hynix disclosed its 2021 business results through a public disclosure on the 28th.

According to this, based on consolidated financial statements, sales recorded 42.9978 trillion won, a 34.8% increase from the previous year, and operating profit recorded 12.4103 trillion won, a 147.6% increase from the previous year. Net profit recorded 9.6162 trillion won, an increase of 102.1% compared to the previous year.

This is the highest annual revenue since the company's founding, surpassing the performance of 2018, when the semiconductor market was at its peak boom.

The company announced that it broke its all-time sales record by actively supplying products based on its technological capabilities and quality competitiveness, amidst an uncertain market environment including supply chain disruptions, as demand for non-face-to-face IT increased.

SK Hynix focused on securing profitability in its DRAM business by flexibly responding to demand in application fields such as PC and server products.

In addition, we have secured the highest level of quality competitiveness in next-generation high-value-added products, such as DDR5 and HBM3, which were developed for the first time in the industry.

In addition, the NAND business, which successfully turned a profit in the third quarter of last year, recorded a sales growth rate significantly exceeding the market average based on the competitiveness of its 128-layer products, thereby achieving a profit on an annual basis as well.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, based on consolidated financial statements, revenue was recorded at 12.3766 trillion won, a 55.4% increase compared to the same period of the previous year, and operating profit was recorded at 4.2195 trillion won, a 340% increase compared to the same period of the previous year. Net profit was recorded at 3.3199 trillion won, an 87.5% increase compared to the same period of the previous year.

Regarding this year's market environment, SK Hynix projected that supply chain issues would be gradually resolved in the second half of the year, leading to increased market demand for memory products.

In line with this, the company has decided to continue a strategy of focusing on profitability in the DRAM business while reducing market volatility by flexibly managing inventory.

In the case of the NAND business, the plan is to continuously pursue growth in scale. SK Hynix expects sales volume to increase by approximately double compared to last year with the addition of the SSD business of its U.S. subsidiary Solidigm, which was launched following the completion of the first phase of the acquisition of Intel's NAND business unit at the end of last year.

Along with this, SK Hynix decided to set the dividend per share at 1,540 won, an increase of more than 30% from 1,170 won last year.

In addition, the company decided to implement a new dividend policy from this year through 2024 and raise the fixed dividend per share from the existing 1,000 won to 1,200 won. It also decided to maintain the policy of distributing an additional 5% of Free Cash Flow (FCF) as dividends. Furthermore, SK Hynix announced that it would use approximately 50% of the FCF generated over the next three years as a source for shareholder returns and would consider share buybacks depending on the situation.

Meanwhile, SK Hynix will conduct open recruitment for new college graduates and experienced employees during the first quarter of this year. The company has decided to expand the scale of hiring compared to previous years to prepare for new future growth engines, such as the establishment of the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, the launch of its U.S. NAND subsidiary Solidigm, and the full-scale operation of the Icheon M16 fab.

Recruitment fields include process, device, design, test, packaging, SoC, software, data science, and product planning/strategy, and the recruitment schedule will be posted on the website next month.