Kioxia profit rises 45-fold on AI demand

Japanese chipmaker Kioxia said Friday its April-June net profit rose more than 45 times from a year earlier to 842.2 billion yen, or $5.3 billion, as demand linked to artificial intelligence lifted its results.

The company said net profit was 18.3 billion yen in the same period a year earlier. Operating profit rose around 2,700% year on year to 1.3 trillion yen.

Both figures missed analyst estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

Kioxia specialises in NAND flash chips. Demand for memory components has grown as companies build artificial intelligence data centres and as storage-heavy AI tools require more capacity.

Kioxia shares have lost more than half their value over the past month, but are still up nearly 1,500% over the past year. The company briefly became Japan's most valuable company in June.

Other major memory-chip companies have also reported large profit increases linked to AI demand. South Korea's Samsung Electronics and SK hynix posted profit jumps this week, while SK hynix shares rose 30% on Friday.

SK hynix's rise was helped by confirmation that the chair of its parent company had bought about $3 million worth of shares after recent steep losses.

Kioxia started as Toshiba Memory, a memory chip business sold by Japanese conglomerate Toshiba in 2018. The company says it is planning a US listing. SK hynix made its Wall Street debut this month after one of the world's biggest stock sales.