Hua Hong reports record Q4 revenue as AI-driven memory crunch fuels price hikes

Chinese foundry Hua Hong Semiconductor said the global memory shortage was an opportunity to raise prices on its logic chips, as it reported record revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025. On its earnings call on Thursday, Hua Hong chairman and president Bai Peng said the memory supercycle was “a positive thing” as it gave the company room to raise prices on logic chips. “Memory certainly is in high demand nowadays, and that will reduce the supply on the logic side,” Bai said, adding that “if the supply gets tighter, it does give us more opportunity to increase prices”. Hua Hong mainly focuses on making mature logic chips, regarded as the “brains” of electronic devices because they process information to complete tasks. High-end logic chips include central processing units and graphics processing units, the latter of which are now widely used in artificial intelligence computing applications. Memory chips, on the other hand, are used to store data temporarily or permanently in electronic devices. Hua Hong increased prices for certain products fabricated on its 12-inch production line, and the results already showed up in the 2025 results, Bai said. Hua Hong “might still have some room to go” on price increases in 2026, he added. The company’s revenue reached a record US$660 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 22.4 per cent from a year earlier. Net profit attributable to shareholders was US$17.5 million, compared to a loss of US$25.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The revenue growth was primarily driven by increased wafer shipments and improved average selling prices, the company said. Shares of Hua Hong dropped 0.8 per cent on Friday to HK$98.80. Its Shanghai-listed stock gained 1.8 per cent to 131.80 yuan. The industry is in the grip of a massive supply crunch for memory chips, as the frantic ramp-up of advanced chips to feed demand from AI data centres eats up global wafer capacity, driving up costs across the supply chain. This has forced some companies, including smartphone makers, to scale back their production plans. Although China’s memory chipmakers are benefiting from the memory chip supercycle, it is a double-edged sword for foundries like Hua Hong and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), which mainly focus on logic chips. Zhao Haijun, co-CEO of SMIC, said on Wednesday that the company was “still well positioned in the current industry development cycle”, although orders from smartphone vendors and makers of other lower-end products were “squeezed” by strong demand for AI chips. For both companies, the outlook in the near term was flat. Hua Hong expected first-quarter revenue to be around US$650 million to US$660 million, close to the amount in the previous quarter, while SMIC also had flat revenue expectations for the quarter.