With a record quarterly loss, SK Hynix is in talks with equipment manufacturer YEST to purchase annealing equipment.

March 13 news, according to foreign media reports, the world's second largest memory chip manufacturer SK Hynix is with the equipment manufacturer YEST to discuss the procurement of annealing equipment.

It is reported that annealing refers to the process of heating the implanted silicon wafer and repairing the lattice defects caused by ion implantation, and the annealing equipment is one of the important thermal process equipment in semiconductor manufacturing.

Affected by weak demand and oversupply in the global chip market, SK Hynix posted its largest-ever quarterly loss in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022.

In the quarter, the company posted an operating loss of 1.7 trillion won ($1.4 billion), compared with a profit of 4.2 trillion won a year earlier, its first quarterly operating loss since the third quarter of 2012.

SK Hynix said in a statement that although sales continued to grow last year, the semiconductor market remained depressed from the second half of the year, so operating profit decreased compared with the previous year.