By now you know that judging the AI investment boom by 'how much money is being poured in' isn't enough. You have to look at whether that money turns into revenue and operating profit, and whether the expensive equipment is actually making decent products.
✦ Three Stories This Week
SK hynix, CXMT and Anthropic
This week, events that show exactly this difference all landed at once. SK hynix topped 100 trillion won in quarterly revenue for the first time, and reports say China's CXMT plans to start making next-generation AI memory but its yield is falling short.
Anthropic filed for its initial public offering, and revenue surged while the accounting net loss was big too. All of it is big news that matters a lot for AI investing.
SK hynix Opens the Era of 100 Trillion Won in Revenue
✦ SK hynix Q3 2026 Results
Preliminary figures, in won
SK hynix's preliminary Q3 2026 results showed revenue of 104.6155 trillion won and operating profit of 83.3338 trillion won. It's the first time quarterly revenue has topped 100 trillion won. The operating margin reached 79.7%.
That works out to almost 80 won of operating profit for every 100 won of revenue, right? Operating profit is the profit before subtracting incidental costs like interest and taxes. Even so, it's a genuinely stunning result.
If 80 won is still left after operating costs come out of revenue, that's an enormously high-value-added structure.
According to Reuters, the average LSEG analyst forecast for operating profit was about 76.7 trillion won. That would have been a terrific result already, but actual profit came in about 8.7% above it.
After the results came out, SK hynix shares jumped more than 9% above the previous day's close at one point during the session.
✦ SK hynix Closing Prices
Oct 8 - Oct 28, Korea Exchange (KRX) regular-session closes, in won
Of course, from October 8 to 27, before the earnings came out, the closing price had fallen about 20.2%, from 1,681,000 won to 1,341,000 won. So the rebound didn't make up the whole drop.
Still, for shareholders who had been feeling gloomy over the recent slide in the stock price, it was a ray of light.
But looking at net profit alone, it fell from the previous quarter, which might seem strange.
In Q2, SK hynix booked 63.3 trillion won in gains from the sale and valuation of investment assets and 1.1 trillion won in currency-related gains, among other items, so net profit was huge to begin with. Those are one-off events, right?
The operating profit that recurs steadily grew about 37.6% from the previous quarter, so yes, the results really are excellent.
✦ 2026 Shareholder Returns
About 100 trillion won in total
The shareholder return plan is big too. The company put its total 2026 shareholder returns at about 100 trillion won, and said it will pursue more than 30 trillion won in cash dividends and more than 60 trillion won in share buybacks and cancellations.
That 100 trillion won is the full 2026 amount, including the 40 trillion won announced earlier. The Q3 dividend is 20,000 won per share: a regular dividend of 10,000 won plus a special dividend of 10,000 won that shares the profit from the Kioxia investment.
Of the separately approved 20 trillion won share buyback, the amount to be cancelled for shareholder returns is 10 trillion won. The remaining 10 trillion won or so is reportedly going to employee compensation.
Side note: Apparently the top choice for a son-in-law in Korea these days isn't a medical or legal professional. It's an employee of Samsung Electronics or SK hynix. Haha... I'm jealous.
It's delivering results in the next-generation HBM race too. SK hynix expected HBM4 to overtake HBM3E in both shipments and revenue starting in Q4.
It said it has signed long-term supply contracts with 14 major customers, including global cloud companies, and that the contracted volume alone covers more than 50% of its 2027-2028 production capacity.
Prices reflect market conditions within a range agreed in advance, and the company built in safeguards like deposits so that customers' purchase plans turn into actual orders and shipments.
Long-term supply contracts aren't guaranteed to be fulfilled, but for now it looks like a fairly stable setup.
China's CXMT Is Making HBM, but the Yield Isn't There?
Good to know: 'yield' is the share of products made in a process that pass a set performance standard. Put simply, make 100 units and only about 20 to 30 of them meet spec.
In the semiconductor industry, low yield means you need more wafers and more money to get the same amount of usable product. Reselling cheap goods sourced from places like China's Taobao, with a margin added on top, was a trend for a while.
Plenty of people lost money and gave up on the business, and one reason was that the yield was far too low.
No matter how cheaply you buy the goods, if you order 100 and 20 are flat-out defective and another 20 are low-quality items that need repairs before you can sell them, it's hard to turn a profit.
✦ CXMT's HBM3E: What Was Reported
Yield figures are from Reuters, citing two anonymous sources
Citing two anonymous sources, Reuters reported that CXMT's HBM3E production yield is about 20% to 30%. In the same report, SK hynix's yield was about 70%.
CXMT has sent samples to Chinese AI chip designers and reportedly plans to start limited production within two months. But the samples' performance is said to be closer to HBM3, the generation before SK hynix's latest HBM3E.
So the name is the same HBM3E, but it lags in both performance and yield.
✦ HBM Revenue Share, Q2 2026
Counterpoint Research. Totals 101% because of rounding
Now for market share in the HBM industry. According to Counterpoint Research, Q2 2026 HBM revenue share was 50% for SK hynix, 33% for Samsung Electronics and 18% for Micron (the figures are rounded, so they add up to 101%).
SK hynix is ahead, but the important point is that its rivals are widening their share too. With CXMT now coming at it as a further challenger, SK hynix investors got nervous, but for now CXMT's yield and quality just aren't there.
Anthropic IPO: Revenue Grew, but So Did the Losses?
On October 26, Anthropic filed an S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
It said it's pursuing a listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker 'ANT', but it hasn't yet set the number of shares to offer or the price range. The filing shows first-half 2026 revenue of $16.286 billion.
That's about 14 times the $1.163 billion from the first half of 2025. Impressive, right? But compute and infrastructure costs alone were $8.945 billion, about 55% of revenue.
Total operating expenses came to $16.979 billion, and the operating loss was $693 million.
✦ Anthropic H1 2026: Operating Loss vs. Net Loss
The net loss includes accounting valuation losses
It's worth looking at why the net loss is so much bigger than the operating loss. The net loss includes a $72.388 billion loss from fair value changes in convertible notes, derivative liabilities and SAFEs.
The filing explains that this item mainly comes from changes in the valuation of the convertible notes and similar instruments as the company's value rose. Other non-operating net expenses of $8.757 billion were booked too.
So an $80.7 billion net loss doesn't mean $80.7 billion in cash flowed out.
Either way, it's still in the red.
AI Investment Forecasts From Major Institutions
✦ AI Spending Forecasts Compared
Periods and scopes differ, so don't just add them up
Forecasts that AI investment will keep growing are still the dominant view. J.P. Morgan projects cumulative data center and AI investment of about $5.5 trillion through 2030.
Bloomberg reported that the 2027 forecast from Goldman Sachs strategists is also above the Wall Street consensus of $1.1 trillion.
Let's sum up. SK hynix showed memory demand turning into record operating profit, and CXMT showed that securing production capacity alone doesn't create competitiveness.
Anthropic's revenue is growing fast, but its infrastructure spending is heavy and it's running an accounting net loss, so investors still doubt whether it can really make money over the long run.
Stick with me and we'll keep tracking how company earnings and investor expectations change.
This isn't investment advice. You know that, right? Let's each protect our own hard-earned money.
That's all for this post. See you next time.
Related posts
- Samsung & SK Hynix Fall Together Despite the HBM Boom
- SMCI Preliminary Revenue Surprise: AI Boom Amid Bubble Fears
- NEXTDC, an AI Data Center Stock, Crashed 42% in a Day
🌐 Korean version: 최신 AI 투자뉴스 총정리 — SK하이닉스 역대급 실적, 앤스로픽 IPO, 중국 HBM 생산 현황까지
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