SK Hynix posted 2.63 trillion won ($2.29 billion) in sales and 23 billion won in operating profit for the second quarter, bouncing back into the black for the first time in four quarters.

In a quarterly regulatory filing, the chipmaker said on Thursday that its sales figure was up 10 percent from the first quarter and its operating margin recorded 1 percent, its officials said.

Bit shipments and the average selling price for the firm’s dynamic random access memory both rose 7 percent from April-June and its bit shipments of NAND flash memory increased 9 percent. The average selling price dropped 19 percent during the same period.

“The price of personal computer DRAM increased as it rebounded on consideration of industry consolidation, while the prices of non-PC DRAM also stabilized during the quarter,” said Kim Joon-ho, head of the corporate center at SK Hynix.

He also said that the DRAM bit shipments growth was higher than expected, but the NAND flash bit shipments were the opposite.

The company had originally planned to spend about 50 percent of its 4.2 trillion won facility investments on NAND flash memory, used in smartphones and tablet PCs, the largest-ever amount.

It has also announced its establishment of a research and development center in Italy by acquiring Italian NAND flash developer Ideaflash last month.

“We’re determined to decide the flexibility of the NAND flash memory production after we watch market conditions until the end of the third quarter,” said James Kim, vice president of investor relations at the firm.

He stated that the NAND flash suppliers set a high goal for the category earlier this year to be fueled by strong sales of devices with solid state drives. Most SSDs use NAND-based flash memory.

But the ultrabooks carrying SSDs, still highly priced, have not caught on in the global market.

“Ultrabooks equipped with Microsoft’s Windows 8 platform will be showcased in the latter half of this year and we expect the demand for NAND flash to normalize,” he said. “Then we will decide on the flexibility of NAND supply, taking next year’s circumstances into consideration.”

Company officials said the firm will work to enhance its competitiveness in premium products such as mobile DRAM, SSDs and embedded multimedia cards to actively respond to value-added IT applications.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)