SK hynix Inc. said Thursday it posted losses for the fourth consecutive quarter in the third quarter of this year but recovering demand for high-performance products helped narrow its operating deficit.

The world's second-largest memory chip maker said in a regulatory filing its operating losses amounted to 1.79 trillion won ($1.32 billion) for the July-September period on a consolidated basis, compared with a profit of 1.67 trillion won a year ago.

Net losses came to 2.18 trillion won, plunging from a net profit of 1.1 trillion won a year earlier. Sales fell 17.5 percent to 9.06 trillion won.

The loss was 74.3 percent higher than the average estimate, according to a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency.

SK hynix said sales of its flagship products, including the AI memory HBM3 and high-capacity mobile DRAM, led to a 24 percent on-quarter increase in sales and a 38 percent decrease in operating loss.

"As market demand for our high-performance memory products continued to grow, our operating performance has steadily improved after hitting the bottom in the first quarter," the company said in a statement.

"Most importantly, our D-RAM business, which swung to the red in the first quarter of this year, turned back to profitability after two quarters." (Yonhap)