SK hynix Went All In On HBM, And Paid For It With A Bruising Miss On Consensus Expectations For Q2’26

wccftech | July 28, 2026, 8:08 p.m. | Original

Things are about to get very ugly for at least one of the so-called 'Big Three' memory players, as SK hynix has just reported a bruising miss on consensus expectations, courtesy of its heavy tilt towards AI-centric HBM.

SK hynix has just reported $54.6 billion (79.3 trillion won) in revenue vs. a consensus estimate of $57.7 billion (83.9 trillion won). Also, the high-flying memory player has disclosed an operating profit of $41.6 billion (60.5 trillion won) against a consensus estimate of $44.2 billion (64.2 trillion won).

These numbers, however, still equate to an year-over-year growth of 257 percent and 557 percent for revenue and operating profit, respectively.

Apparently, this bruising miss is a direct function of SK hynix's HBM-heavy sales mix. Given the fact that commodity DRAM is currently commanding a premium over HBM, SK hynix's ASP growth rate was lower than the market average.

Despite this miss, the overall paradigm in the memory sphere is not expected to change, with SK hynix's CEO going so far as to proclaim recently that 2027 "will be the worst year in the industry's history from the supply perspective."

Do note that SK hynix's Yongin Y1 fab will come online in February 2027, while the Y2 will do so in H2 2028. As such, the company is expected to supply 18 billion GB of HBM in 2026 and 24 billion GB in 2027.

Meanwhile, perhaps realizing the problems with its overwhelming skew towards HBM, SK hynix is trying to pivot back towards consumer DRAM, aiming to start delivering LPDDR6 RAM to customers within H2 2026. It's also hedging its bets by bringing LPDDR6 to the SOCAMM standard for AI datacenters.

We have tuned in to SK hynix's earnings call and will update this post with any valuable nuggets of information that we glean during the call.

Here is a running summary of important points:

  1. "Our major customers are still requesting more memory supply in PC and mobile applications."
  2. Second-quarter enterprise SSD revenue more than doubled from the previous quarter.
  3. Average SSD selling prices rose by the mid-50% range quarter over quarter.

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