Hynix hits record quarterly profit.

Byline: From Register-Guard and news service reports

Hynix Semiconductor Inc., the world's fourth-largest maker of computer memory chips, reported its highest quarterly profit as chip sales and prices rose.

First-quarter net profit was $324 million, up from a $850 million year-earlier loss, the Icheon, South Korean-based firm said in a regulatory filing.

The profit, the highest since quarterly reports began in 2000, beat the forecast of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

Hynix has a 700-employee computer chip plant in west Eugene and computer chip plants in South Korea.

Chief Financial Officer Chung Hyung Ryang said in February Hynix will make a profit in 2004 after running up $10 billion in losses since 2000, when a glut of chips caused an industry slump. Hynix, now owned by creditors, said quarterly sales doubled to $1.1 billion as businesses replace computers at the fastest pace in four years.

``Today's results were a surprise,'' said Kang Bum Goo, an investment manager at Landmark Investment Trust Management Co. in Seoul. ``It was expected that they would do well, but not this well.''

Hynix, which raised contract prices on its memory chips twice in April, said it may raise prices again in May.

But prices of chips sold on contract are trading between $43 and $45 per module set and have little room to rise, said D.S. Kim, Hynix's senior vice president for sales and marketing for memory.

Spot prices of the most widely used type of computer memory, dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, jumped to $5.51 at the end of March, up from $3.70 at the end of last year, according to Taiwan-based Dramexchange. They last traded at $5.17 each.

Since reaching this year's high of $6.53 on April 12, spot prices for DRAM have fallen by a fifth. Hynix shares have fallen 22 percent since then.

Fluctuation in chip prices has kept Choi Young Chul, an investment manager at Midas International Asset Management in Seoul, from buying Hynix stock.

``It's DRAM prices that investors are most concerned about, since they're so volatile and especially since spot prices fell recently,'' said Choi.

South Korea-based Samsung Electronics Co., Hynix's biggest rival in Asia and the world's largest DRAM maker, this month reported record quarterly profit, partly because of a surge in chip demand.

Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc., the industry's No. 2 producer, said its net loss in the three months ended March 4 narrowed 95 percent from a year earlier. Infineon Technologies AG, the No. 3 DRAM maker, earned its third straight quarterly profit.