Hynix Semiconductor Inc. announced Thursday that its consolidated sales for last year reached record 12.09 trillion won ($10.86 billion), up by 53 percent from 2009, despite the fall in prices of DRAM and NAND Flash memory.

The world’s second-biggest computer memory chipmaker said that its operating profit totaled 3.27 trillion won, an increase of 1,605 percent from 192 billion won recorded in 2009.

The company’s net income also amounted to 2.66 trillion won, up from the loss of 333 billion won in the previous year.

“The figures of sales, operating profit and net income are the highest, thanks to the generation-ahead technology leadership and profitable product portfolio,” the company said.

But for the last quarter of 2010, during which semiconductor prices saw the deepest dip, Hynix’s sales recorded 2.75 trillion won, decreasing from 3.25 trillion won in the third quarter.

In the fourth quarter, dynamic random access memory (DRAM) average selling price fell 28 percent and NAND Flash average selling price declined by 12 percent.

However, the bit shipments for the two different memories climbed by 18 percent and 32 percent quarter-over-quarter, respectively.

Operating profit of the fourth quarter was set at 418 billion won with operating margin of 15 percent, down from 1.01 trillion won with operating margin of 31 percent in the third quarter.

Net income for the quarter reached 110 billion won, decreased from 1.06 trillion won in the previous quarter.

Weak demand for personal computers has been mainly reported to be pushing down chip prices last year.

Hynix also said that it expects computer memory chip prices to fall further by more than 30 percent in 2011 due to strong supply growth and weak demand from computer manufacturers.

It also states that it expects its average selling prices of DRAM to drop by high-teen percentages from the October-December period, when its prices fell by 28 percent.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)