A view of SK Hynix headquarters in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Feb. 5 (Korea Bizwire) — SK Hynix, fresh off its strongest year on record, will award employees bonuses totaling 2,964 percent of monthly base pay — the largest payout in the chipmaker’s history — as it seeks to cement its lead in the intensifying global race for semiconductor talent.
The performance-based payout, known internally as profit-sharing (PS), will be distributed on Wednesday, according to industry officials. For an employee earning 100 million won ($75,000) annually, the bonus would amount to roughly 148 million won.
The award follows a sweeping revision to the company’s compensation formula agreed upon by labor and management last year. The previous cap of 1,000 percent of base pay has been scrapped. Instead, SK Hynix will allocate 10 percent of annual operating profit to the bonus pool — a structure it has pledged to maintain for a decade.
Under the new system, 80 percent of the calculated bonus will be paid immediately, with the remaining 20 percent deferred over two years. The framework mirrors compensation practices at leading global chipmakers such as Taiwan’s TSMC, which similarly distributes about 10 percent of operating profit to employees.
View of SK hynix headquarters in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
The move comes after SK Hynix reported record 2025 results, with revenue of 97.1 trillion won and operating profit of 47.2 trillion won. The profit-sharing pool is estimated at roughly 4.5 trillion won, excluding contributions from its NAND subsidiary Solidigm.
Including earlier productivity incentives of up to 150 percent of base pay awarded in each half of last year, total performance-based compensation tied to 2025 results reaches 3,264 percent.
The generous payouts underscore the company’s determination to attract and retain top engineering talent as competition intensifies in artificial intelligence memory chips. SK Hynix has emerged as a dominant supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to major customers including Nvidia and is preparing to expand shipments of next-generation HBM4 products.
This image, provided by SK hynix Inc. on Jan. 13, 2026, shows a concept image of the company’s new back-end fabrication plant set to be built in the central city of Cheongju. (Yonhap)
Industry analysts say the compensation overhaul could help stem talent migration and counter a broader shift of science and engineering graduates toward other professions.
The company has also introduced a shareholder participation program allowing employees to receive up to half of their bonus in company stock, with an additional 15 percent cash incentive if the shares are held for one year.
With demand for advanced memory chips expected to remain strong, securities firms project that SK Hynix could post operating profit between 100 trillion and 130 trillion won this year, potentially extending its record-breaking run.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
