SK hynix Inc. said Thursday it swung to a profit in the first quarter of last year on the back of rising global demand for premium memory chip products.

The world’s second-largest memory chipmaker posted an operating profit of 2.88 trillion won, (US$2.09 billion) for the January-March period, compared with a loss of 3.4 trillion won a year ago, the company said in a regulatory filing.

It is the second-highest quarterly operating profit, following the records of the first quarter of 2018.

Its net profit came to 1.91 trillion won, turning from a loss of 2.58 trillion won a year earlier.

Sales shot up 144.3 percent to 12.42 trillion won, marking a record high for a first quarter.

The earnings beat market expectations. The average estimate of net profit by analysts stood at 1.53 trillion won, according to a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency.

SK hynix attributed the larger-than-expected first-quarter performance to robust sales of its premium products for artificial inte
lligence, including high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips and a rebound in demand for NAND flash memory chips.

“An increase in the sales of AI server products backed by its leadership in AI memory technology, including HBM, and continued efforts to prioritize profitability led to a 734 percent on-quarter jump in the operating profit,” the company said in a statement.

Source: Yonhap News Agency