Original by Su Yang
Edited by Xu Qingyang
As SK Hynix's market cap continues to hit new highs, the "year-end bonus forecast" adds another layer of drama to the already booming memory sector.
Recently, news emerged that driven by the explosive demand for AI-powered storage, SK Hynix, a core memory supplier from South Korea, could see its 2026 operating profit ceiling reach 250 trillion won. Under a 10% profit-sharing rule, the maximum year-end bonus per employee could potentially exceed 3 million RMB.
SK Hynix Performance Data
South Korean media, citing matchmaking agencies, claimed "SK Hynix employees are now unconditionally matched as A-tier in blind dates," and variety shows have jokingly referred to SK Hynix's vest uniforms as "having high gold content."
Investment bank Macquarie Securities further predicted that SK Hynix's 2027 operating profit could reach 447 trillion won. If the profit-sharing rule remains unchanged, the per-employee bonus payable in 2027 would be about 1.29 billion won, close to 6.1 million RMB.
In a response to *First Finance*, SK Hynix confirmed the authenticity of the 10% profit-sharing rule but emphasized that as the 2026 and next year's annual performance figures are not yet finalized, the bonus scale cannot be predicted, subtly refuting the accuracy of the 6.1 million RMB bonus figure.
While the predictions of massive year-end bonuses may not be entirely accurate, there is a clear disparity in bonuses between Chinese and South Korean employees.
"We have removed the bonus cap, but bonuses in China remain low," said an SK Hynix China employee. "In South Korea, it's settled once a year, while here in China, it's twice a year."
The employee revealed that if Korean employees get a 3 million RMB bonus, Chinese employees get less than 5% of that, roughly 150,000 RMB. "It's not that each of us gets 150,000; it's adjusted based on KPI ratings. The higher the rating, the higher the bonus. The most I've ever received was a little over 100,000."
This employee has been with SK Hynix for over 10 years and holds a technical position background.
In the super-cycle of the memory industry, expectations of huge year-end bonuses have sparked media reports suggesting that memory jobs have surpassed doctors and lawyers to become the most favored positions by mothers-in-law in the South Korean matchmaking market.
However, compared to the current heat, the memory downturn cycle was a completely different scene.
In fiscal year 2023, during the global semiconductor industry's "winter," SK Hynix's annual revenue fell approximately 27% to 32.77 trillion won, with a net loss of 9.14 trillion won. "The lowest point was around 2023 and 2024, with no bonus at all, it was 0," revealed the aforementioned SK Hynix China employee.
Regarding the highly publicized topic of "3 million+, 6 million+ RMB year-end bonuses per capita," multiple industry insiders have raised doubts, emphasizing that the per capita figure is not representative.
"The average is possible, but it definitely won't be 3 million per person. Executives take more, engineers get hundreds of thousands, and operators getting 100,000 RMB is also possible," said one semiconductor professional. "Take TSMC engineers as an example, their annual compensation can reach around 1 million RMB."
"I look at my income and then look at what's posted online. The numbers are vastly different," explained the SK Hynix China employee regarding the bonus disparity. "Their (Korean employees') monthly salaries are higher, and bonuses are distributed based on a proportion of 12 months' salary."
Currently, SK Hynix has three main factories in mainland China, located in Wuxi, Dalian, and Chongqing. The Wuxi facility primarily handles DRAM business, Dalian houses the NAND factory of Solidigm (acquired from Intel's assets), Chongqing is a packaging and testing base, and there are also sales companies providing technical support in Shenzhen, Beijing, and Shanghai.
According to recruitment information on Liepin for the Dalian factory, monthly salaries for related engineer positions are generally in the range of 10,000 to 30,000 RMB, with a promised 13th-month salary, and senior engineer positions can offer up to 35,000 RMB per month.
In addition to salary, SK Hynix provides standard benefits like annual leave for Chinese employees. For example, support positions like sales do not require overtime work, but there are no stock-related incentives.
"Management gets it, but they are all Koreans. Chinese cannot be in management positions," emphasized the SK Hynix China employee.
Several former employees of South Korean companies stated that companies generally do not offer stock incentives to Chinese employees. In the view of a former Samsung employee, the Chinese company feels more like a sales entity, similar to a national-level agent concept.
"Now there are also mainland Chinese entering middle management. TSMC is similar," said former TSMC plant construction expert and Ronghe Semiconductor Consulting CEO Zihao Wu. "It's normal for Korean factories to have more Koreans and prioritize them. As they operate longer in mainland China, local management cadres will also emerge. It's not that absolute."
From industry and company forecasts, memory will remain a hot topic for the next 2-3 years, with "marriage jokes" and "uniform jokes" likely to keep appearing.
At the first-quarter earnings conference, SK Hynix's CFO stated that over the next three years, demand represented by HBM will most likely continue to exceed supply, and related growth will continue to revolve around to-B demand, a signal also reflected in SK Hynix's official press release.
SK Hynix stated: "Although the first quarter is typically a seasonally slow period, market demand remained strong, driven by increased investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The company maintained its upward performance momentum by expanding sales of high-value-added products such as High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), high-capacity server DRAM modules, and enterprise solid-state drives (eSSD)."
In summary, the above are all typical to-B customer demands.
This means that if memory suppliers like SK Hynix do not increase production capacity support for consumer-grade products, the topic of memory price hikes we've been discussing will continue to impact consumer-grade products and drive a wave of product price increases, persistently troubling cyber gamers with "digital gold."
