SK Hynix Inc., the world's No. 2 memory chip maker, said Thursday it logged a net loss for the fourth straight quarter as weak cheap prices and currency losses ate into its profit.

Net loss reached 53.3 billion won ($46.4 million) in the April-June period, a sharp turnaround from a 473 billion won profit a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Sales slipped 4.6 percent on-year to 2.63 trillion won, and operating profit dropped 94.9 percent to 22.8 billion won.

Operating profit, however, swung to the black from three months earlier when the chip giant suffered an operating loss of 260 billion won.

SK Hynix, which became part of the country's No. 3 conglomerate SK Group in March, vies with bigger rival Samsung Electronics Co.

in the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip market and with Japan-based Toshiba Corp. in the NAND flash memory market. (Yonhap News)