OCI Materials has changed its name to SK Materials, aiming to make a fresh start under the wing of SK Business group.

OCI Materials held an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting on Jan. 16 to approve the name change to SK Materials and appoint SK Corp. President Cho Dae-shik and Executive Vice President Jang Yong-ho as inside directors. 

SK acquired a 49.1 percent stake in OCI Materials from OCI last November and recently completed the takeover process. 

SK said it plans to nurture SK Materials, focusing on specialty gas for producing semiconductors and display panels, into a global integrated semiconductor materials provider.

The acquisition is part of the business group’s broad effort to flesh out a plan to nurture semiconductor materials into one of the business group’s top five core growth engines, business sources said. 

SK Materials will have synergetic effects in strengthening its presence in the Chinese market, the world’s largest semiconductor investment market, by making the most of its largest consumer company, SK Hynix and SK Business Group’s overseas network.

SK Materials has a 40 percent share in the global nitron fluorine three market. SK Materials is the sole company among Korean and Japanese semiconductor materials providers to have nitron fluorine three production and logistics facilities in Jiangsu and Xian, China. 

SK Materials plans to increase sales in China by capitalizing on SK Group’s existing corporate networks, SK Materials officials said. SK Materials aims to become a global integrated semiconductor materials provider with support from its parent company. The company plans to diversify its business arenas aside from nitron fluorine three and other products, they said. 

SK Materials posted 338 billion won in sales and 112.8 billion won in operating profit, the best-ever, in 2015. The company plans to raise the production capacity of its nitron fluorine three plant in Yeongju from current 6,600 tons to 7,600 tons. 

SK Materials is forecast to keep on growing since the company has already secured Korean and foreign large-scale demand companies, group officials said.

President Park Sung-wook of SK Hynix. (Photo:SK Hynix)

SK Hynix Posts Record Operating Profit for 3 Years in a Row

SK Hynix, South Korea's No. 2 memory chipmaker, posted record-high earnings in 2015 for the third year in a row on the back of robust semiconductor sales, a regulatory filing showed on Jan. 5.

Revenue increased 10 percent from a year earlier to 18.8 trillion won ($15.6 billion) in 2015. Operating profit advanced 4 percent to 5.3 trillion won, and net profit rose 3 percent to 4.3 trillion won.

All three metrics topped previous record numbers tallied in 2014 and 2013.

Operating profit margin recorded 28 percent in 2015, with the net profit rate reaching 23 percent.

In the fourth quarter of last year, however, earnings slowed down from the previous quarter due to soft demand for memory chips.

Fourth-quarter operating profit tumbled 29 percent from three months earlier to 988.9 billion won. Compared with a year earlier, profit plunged 41 percent.

Revenue was 4.4 trillion won during the October-December period, down 10 percent from previous three months. From a year ago, it was down 14 percent.

Net profit declined 17 percent from the previous quarter to 871 billion won in the final quarter of last year.

The company's DRAM sales fell 1 percent, while NAND flash shipment rose 4 percent. Average price of DRAM and NAND flash chips recorded a double-digit decline, pulling down the fourth-quarter earnings. 

South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix said Wednesday its profits more than doubled in the fourth quarter to a record high, thanks to the soaring popularity of new mobile devices such as Apple's iPhones.

Net profit for October to December last year amounted to 1.6 trillion won ($1.5 billion), up 106 percent from a year ago, the Icheon-based company said in a statement.

Operating profit jumped 112 percent to 1.7 trillion won and sales rose 53 percent to 5.1 trillion won.

SK Hynix which is Apple's second largest chip supplier is one of the world's largest makers of memory chips used for personal computers, servers and mobile devices.

Apple on Wednesday posted a record profit of $18 billion for the fourth quarter on booming sales of the big-screen iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

SK Hynix said shipments of its NAND flash chips used for mobile handsets rose 30 percent due to "growing demand boosted by the launch of new mobile devices".

The company also saw annual net profit for 2014 hit a record of 4.2 trillion won, up nearly 50 percent from a year ago.

It added that the memory chip market in 2015 would be led by growth in mobile and corporate server segment. 

SK Hynix has four production facilities in Wuxi and Chongqing, China as well as domestic business sites in Icheon and Cheongju. As a global company, SK Hynix also operates sales subsidiaries in ten countries including the U.S., U.K., Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Taiwan and China, and four R&D corporate bodies in Italy, U.S., Taiwan and Belarus.