The memory shortage looks set to last even longer than initially thought, as SK Hynix upped its forecast woes to 2030.
The Korean giant and one of the big three memory makers previously predicted constraints would subside around 2028, but during its Q3 earnings, Hynix admitted that demand exceeding supply would persist into the next decade.
“Memory supply cannot keep pace with this level of demand growth; thus, we expect it to be difficult to fully meet customers' volume requirements in the near term, given the complexities involved in implementing leading-edge processes and the lead times required to construct new production facilities,” SK Hynix CFO Woo-Hyun Kim told investors.
The Korean memory maker has ridden the hardware dearth to the moon, earning a stellar share price after a tumultuous U.S. public offering in the summer. Alongside Micron, its market cap cracked the $1 trillion mark for the first time.
Its Q3 earnings for 2026 saw no change – raking in revenues of 104.6155 trillion won ($78 billion), with quarterly sales surpassing 100 trillion won ($74 billion) for the first time in its history.
But for all the capital coming in, SK Hynix is predicting a more serious outlook when it comes to chip supply. The company said the technical difficulty of edge processes and the lead times required to build new production facilities are compounding its ability to keep up with demand.
The company is already accelerating plans to build out capacity through means including low-power wafer factories and expanding production in the U.S. CFO Kim told investors that capital expenditures in 2027 will “increase significantly compared to 2026” as Hynix invests in equipment to expand production.
“The scale and execution timing of investment will be determined by considering mid- to long-term demand visibility secured through customer discussions, product competitiveness, profitability and investment efficiency,” the CFO said.
The supply shortage has hit so hard that prices across the industry have skyrocketed, with memory hardware stocks as terrifyingly low as less than a week’s worth of inventory on hand, a global player in electronics distribution recently told SDxCentral.
Solidigm U-turn about prioritizing shareholder returns
In addition to realizing the industry’s worst memory hardware fears, SK Hynix lifted the lid on its decision to U-turn taking Solidigm public.
After an initial valuation of $35.3 billion, reports surfaced last week that an IPO was now off the cards due to fears it would reduce Hynix’s indirect ownership of Solidigm.
During its Q3 earnings presentation, CEO Kwak Noh-Jung outlined the one-eighty, saying that due to recent financial market conditions and “other factors,” the company concluded that proceeding “would not be the best way to achieve the originally anticipated outcome.”
“Our principle has been to share the majority of the gains from successful strategic investments with our shareholders. These gains help replenish our capacity for shareholder returns, which may temporarily decline as we prepare for the future, allowing us to continue investing boldly in sustainable growth while protecting shareholder interests,” Kwak told investors.
“In line with this principle, we have decided to return the gains realized from our investment in Kioxia this year to shareholders through a special dividend, and we will remain committed to upholding this principle so that our shareholders can directly benefit from the returns from our strategic investments.”
SK Hynix snapped up Solidigm for a cool $9 billion in 2020, merging it with its own non-volatile (NAND) operations. Solidigm’s now-ditched public plan follows suit with Hynix's plans for its aptly named AI Co., which, after recent multi-million-dollar investments, has stalled somewhat following its January carve-out.
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