Gwak Nojeong, President of SK Hynix, "Efforts to Pay Performance Bonuses Before Lunar New Year Next Year"

Communication Event with Executives and Employees at Icheon Campus on the 11th
"Maintain and Strengthen Overwhelming HBM Competitiveness This Year"

Kwack No-jeong, CEO of SK Hynix, said on the 11th, "We will strive to pay the excess profit performance bonus (PS) by January next year, before the Lunar New Year."

Gwak Nojeong, CEO of SK Hynix. Photo by SK Hynix

On the same day, Kwack held the 'Together THE Communication Event' at SK Hynix's Icheon Campus in Gyeonggi Province and told employees, "(We are) also giving a lot of thought to (special bonuses)."

SK Hynix holds communication events every quarter where the CEO directly listens to employees' stories, explains various management issues, and communicates. The event is broadcast live to all domestic SK Hynix business sites.

At the event, except for Kim Ju-seon, President of AI Infrastructure who was on a business trip, all C-level executives including Song Hyun-jong, President of the Corporate Center, Ahn Hyun, President of Development, Kim Young-sik, Vice President of Yangsan Operations, and Cha Seon-yong, Vice President and Head of the Future Technology Research Institute, took the stage.

PS is an incentive paid once a year based on annual performance, up to 50% of the annual salary (1000% of the base salary). Since 2021, SK Hynix has paid PS by linking individual performance to 10% of the previous year's operating profit as the funding source.

Given that SK Hynix has been achieving record-breaking performance thanks to high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the PS to be paid next year is expected to reach the maximum amount, according to industry forecasts. Employees also have high expectations for the 'year-end special performance bonus.' The special performance bonus is an additional bonus paid when performance (operating profit) exceeds the PS payment criteria. At the end of December 2021, SK Hynix paid a special performance bonus equivalent to about 300% of the base salary.

CEO Kwack said, "Advance payment is not possible based on forecasts alone, and we will only know whether to pay the special bonus after the fourth-quarter results of this year are all out." However, he added, "Unlike quantitative factors, qualitatively, (SK Hynix members) have achieved leadership in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry and competitive superiority over rivals, so we will try to move in a positive direction."

Regarding this year's business performance, CEO Kwack confidently stated, "We have completed the development of HBM3E and laid the foundation for commercialization, maintaining and strengthening the mass production system and overwhelming competitiveness of HBM."

SK Hynix began delivering the HBM3E 8-stack to Nvidia, a major player in the artificial intelligence (AI) chip market, for the first time in the industry in March. Last month, it started mass production of the world's first HBM3E 12-stack product, aiming for shipment this quarter. Subsequently, it plans to supply the HBM3E 16-stack product in the first half of next year and release the 6th generation HBM4 12-stack product in the second half of next year.