Hynix Semiconductor posted 2.55 trillion won ($2.27 billion) in total sales and an operating loss of 167 billion won in the final quarter of last year, triggered by the dampened global economy and the weak demand for PC memory chips.

The world’s second-largest memory chipmaker said its sales from October-December dropped 7 percent year-on-year and the net loss recorded 240 billion won, a slight improvement from the previous quarter.

The consolidated sales for 2011 reached 10.4 trillion won, a 14 percent decrease from 2010, and its operating profit was set at 325 billion won, down 89 percent from 2.98 trillion won in 2010. The net loss for the year amounted to 56 billion won.

“Challenging market conditions were shown last year for the dynamic random access memory industry. The global economy continued to lead an overall decrease in IT demand,” its chief financial officer Kim Min-chul said during a conference call.

The destructive flooding in Thailand had also dragged down the PC DRAM market conditions, making it impossible for the PC makers to get a steady supply of hard disk drive storages earlier last year.

Kim, however, said the quarter-on-quarter operating profit figures were improving with a positive outlook for the mobile market condition, widened gap with second-tier firms and product portfolio expansion.

“The shareholding structure will improve with SK Telecom becoming our new major shareholder,” he said. “This will remove uncertainty regarding the shareholding structure.”

With the demand for wireless gadgets to continuously grow in 2012, the mobile DRAM will take up about 30 percent by revenue at the end of the year, up from the high 20 percent in the fourth quarter, according to James Kim, vice president of investors at Hynix.

“Smartphone has penetrated into low-end mobile market so we’re expecting continuous growth. There’s also a strong demand for higher end mobiles so it will grow and we’ll continue to monitor the market,” he said.

He also said Hynix spent about 70 percent of facility investments in DRAM last year, but up to 60 percent will be injected for NAND Flash memory, which are used in smartphones and tablets, this year.

“NAND Flash demand will be driven by mobiles and Solid State Drive notebooks,” said Kim. “We’re planning to spend 4.2 trillion won in facility investments in 2012, increasing investment in NAND Flash to produce better balance in our product mix.”


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