Hynix’s crisis-solving processes and promotion status Micro Finance Minyoung Park Keio University Economics Junior Dongkyun Park Hanyang University Mechanical Engineering Senior Members Minyoung Park
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- > [Executive Summary] [Note] - Why Hynix -Reasons and prospects of this research [Hynix]
- -Analyzing causes of crisis and their loss - Solutions of Hynix [Future direction proposals- the need for promotion] -Receiving spotlight
- Why Hynix -the reasons and prospects of this research
- Figure -Status of Hynix
- Table 2. [Hynix’s crisis and their solutions] -Hynix’s crisis
- - Analyzing causes of crisis and their loss
- - Solutions of Hynix Decision to take over
- [Future direction proposals- the need for promotion] -Receiving spotlight
- [Appendix] -Thanks to
- -Thoughts of the members
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Hynix’s crisis-solving processes and promotion status Micro Finance Minyoung Park Keio University Economics Junior Dongkyun Park Hanyang University Mechanical Engineering Senior Members Minyoung Park Keio University_ Economics_ Junior 81)8035983769 Jumpout_7@yahoo.co.jp Future Career Plans: plan to enter the world’s famous consulting company after studying Figures and Econometrics in Japan. Will be a promising consultant. Continue to study on national and international marketing strategies.
Pdk190@hanyang.ac.kr Future Career Plans: want to be a Project Manager(PM). Continue on Major studies (Mechanical Engineering) as well as researching markets and their marketing strategies.
Here, we are going to analyze and observe the crisis management, marketing and PR strategy of Hynix which opened up new Korean Electronic market and became one of the major semiconductor production centers in the world. [Note] 「(…) The technology in America, Japan, etc. is advanced in that they plan by computers, developed nanotechnology and already entered into the completely automated step. In comparison, Korean technology is only limited to the simple functions and low-grade articles technology even though they keep their basic planning ability. They are also behind the mass producing technology. This is because not only the government but also the companies that are not interested in investment. It seems that there are many special terminologies, but they are all called for semiconductors. Even though the two largest semiconductor companies in the world, Samsung and Hynix, are located in South Korea, those sentences above are pointing at reality of South Korea beyond U.S. and Japan. They seem to be rather difficult to understand, but they were reported in a newspaper in June 1983 when Hyundai Electronics was just launched. That was such a dark age, but Hyundai Electronics developed SDRAM and took place among the technically advanced countries. In 1950s, one Asian who dreamed of building a transistor factory memorized all the assembling methods, wandering American factories, to introduce the new technology from America. He is Masaru Ibuka who established Sony Corporation, Japan’s best-known Electronic Company, and served as a president of Sony overcame the obstacles from being a developed country among developing countries. After Korean business groups felt their crisis to Japan’s advanced technology and repeated imitating and creating, they released many products named by 「the world’s first and succeeded entering into the top 10 list. In this report, we are going to describe the reasons why we chose Hynix as a research subject and the contents briefly.
In other words, our team is going to suggest solutions and observe these following two points: First, we will analyze their crisis management. Second, we will find their promotion history from their period of Hyundai Electronics, point out some problems, and finally propose suitable PR methods. The former will be at Chapter 2 [Hynix’s crisis and their crisis management] and the latter will be at Chapter 3 [Future direction proposals-the need for promotion].
In February 1983, South Korea opened the start line at unexpecting situation. Including the major group like Samsung, it was the very meaningful first step towards Korean semiconductor industry. -Definition of Hynix Hyundai Electronics which is the origin of Hynix as an affiliate belonged to the biggest business group, Hyundai, in 1981. Until 1980, Hyundai has done many-sided works, especially focusing on the electronic industry. Hynix merged with Hyundai Electronics in 1983 and restarted as Hyundai Inc. Because Hynix started relatively late compared to LG, Samsung, Daewoo, etc. at that time, Hyundai President Jung Ju-young directly led the new business. Also, Hynix made efforts to found foreign corporation through the development of strategy in compressive technology. The pre-investment strategy of Hynix affected to the members at Hyundai and MORDERN ELECTRO SYSTEMS which is the foreign corporation of Hynix located in Silicon Valley and it made possible for them to provide high-tech products. As investment for the high-tech industry was expanded, the firm established a huge factory in Ichon, Kyungki province and completed in October 1986. Since then, Hyundai Electronics had grown up as an oligopolistic company of internal electronic markets after striving for manufacturing household electric appliances, semiconductors, computers, etc. in the short term. Hynix chose capital as the origin of their competitiveness, which became the significant factor for the flourishing semiconductors and business environment of Hyundai groups. In 1987, the price of semiconductors was raised sharply as U.S. brought antidumping lawsuits against Japan and the Japanese companies were controlled by voluntary export restraint after the semiconductors agreement between U.S. and Japan. As a result, semiconductor industry started to thrive from the end of the year and Hyundai Electronics which entered into semiconductor markets with LG semiconductors in the place of Samsung was flourishing at that time. Thanks to the unexpected good result, Hyundai Electronics tried their investment strategy and they could enter into the top 10 DRAM suppliers in the short term, making a total profit of 1 trillion won in 1990. As Big Deal was set up by the government, restructuring was carried out as a part of Big Deal project on seven different types of business such as petro chemistry, semiconductors, etc. whose profitability was weakened by oversupply from the government’s overlapping investments in September 1998 since they have agreed on five principles of corporate reform between government and major companies in 1998. According to the evaluation of professional ratings agencies after the integration announcement of Hynix and LG semiconductors in September 1998, LG group gave up Semiconductors business in January 1999 and Hynix agreed to pay by installments 2.56 trillion won which is the purchase price of the shares of LG Semiconductor owned by LG group, and they took LG Semiconductor over since October 1999. Finally in March 2000, they changed their company name from Hyundai Semiconductor to Hynix Semiconductor and separated themselves from Hyundai group. Figure 1 indicates the shares of Hynix on 19 August 2011, and their aggregate market price was ranked 22nd in KOSPI. 
Figure -Status of Hynix Hynix is a B2B company. They increased business with foreign major companies, supplying DRAM to world’s giant electronic firms such as DELL, HP, etc. Besides, suppliers of NAND Flash are various throughout the whole IT consumer products, and it is used for the worldwide PC and IT products like Apple. It also has customers from manufacturing companies, memory module companies, and memory and memory card manufacturers, etc. Table 1 indicates the percentage of each market in semiconductor industry in the third quarter of 2011, placing Hynix as the 2nd Korean company entered into Top 10 following
Table 1 the 2nd ranked Samsung. Also, Hynix occupied 65% with Samsung in world’s DRAM market in the second quarter of same year. Hynix is the expectative firm, developing the world’s first 30 nanometer 4 GB DRAM. Table 2 indicates the rank of profits among the DRAM manufacturing companies in the second quarter of the year 2011. 
Table 2. [Hynix’s crisis and their solutions] -Hynix’s crisis The reason of their crisis was, firstly, government’s political involvement and their aftermath from the forced merger. In other words, Big Deal that the government pushed in its early days and uneconomical Big Deal started by officers who led the policies caused the crisis of Hynix. The initial object of Big Deal that the government wanted to take Hyundai Electronics and LG Semiconductor was to lead price increase and make more profitability. According to the data which calculated the synergy effect incurred by the integration of Hyundai Electronics and LG Semiconductors from government, they could save approximately $6.2 billion over the next five years. Above all, either company does not need to establish manufacturing factories and they could save $2.5 billion for investments, $2 billion for R&D investments, $1 billion for management in this case. Expected effect seemed to be huge when considering they were, moreover, expected to save $700 million for royalty and patents. The point was that they could focus on the development of high value products if the two were integrated. President at Hyundai Electronics, Choi Soo, said 「We can see one company released from all debts only by saving thir investments costs 7.5 trillion in five years. President Choi also said 「The synergy effect will hit their stride from installing 256M DRAM in the next 2-3 years. Mutual complementary effect was expected in technologies. LG had technologies for next generation high-speed semiconductor industry, developing 64M DRAM semiconductor, and Hyundai held a dominant position in mass semiconductor industry and succeed in developing trial products for 256M synchronous DRAM. They have the semiconductor technology if they compound each other. It is estimated to save as much as $6.2 billion over the next five years by saving fee from research and development (R&D), sales management, anti-dumping duty, and royalty. The government took the lead in Big Deal with these reasons, but this Big Deal finally came to fail. The debts in Hynix burdened by 4 trillion won debts of LG Semiconductor were sharply increased to 15 trillion won. Also, Hynix Semiconductor increased capital by issuing new stocks, and issued company stock in order to pay 2.56 trillion won for LG semiconductor’s proceeds from the sale of their products. Hynix repaid the debts with their money gained from their boom period 2000s; they were still cornered in the financial crisis since their debts were so large. Since their weakening was accelerating and they had the fragile structure in external stimulation, they faced financial destruction because of their DRAM price after 2000. The decline was the reason of. One example of the second reason is the slump in DRAM prices after 2000 and it was the most immediately affected reason for Hynix’s bankruptcy. The reason why Hynix underwent a liquidity crisis in two months after they raised $1.25 billion last June was, in fact, because their semiconductor prices had dropped significantly and unexpectedly. Having a liquidity crisis in two months after obtaining 1.6 trillion won for recapitalization (December 1998: 4.6 billion won, June 1999: 1.15 trillion won) also meant the slump in semiconductor prices. Since 2000 and the dropping in semiconductor prices due to the recession in word’s IT industry continued over a year, the economy in world’s semiconductor industry entered into the extreme state of depression. This decreasing semiconductor prices continued from the end of 1990 until the beginning of 2000. Semiconductor prices seemed to be increasing temporarily in September 1999 due to the earthquake in Taiwan, but it decreased significantly from the slowed demands for PC and the rise in output from makers at the end of 2000 when the word’s recession started. In case of 128M DRAM, there were a 7.8% decline from the end of July 2000 and a 21.7% decline from the end of 2000 at the end of September 2001. World’s economy in semiconductor industry was in a period of boom and bust, but it is now in a serious depression. The semiconductor markets in the world developed by the expansion of PC market from 1992 to 1995 finally faced the recession about for three years due to the stagnant economy and oversupply of semiconductors from 1996 to 1998. They were on the block again from 1999 to 2000 after passing their boom period shortly for two year in internet and IT market. Semiconductor market in 2001 was expected to be poor compared to the year of 1985 when a 20% decline resulted. Especially the cycle of DRAM economy has a larger broad distribution than the semiconductor market, and it gives more shock to internal semiconductor industry where their memories such as DRAM are very dependent. - Analyzing causes of crisis and their loss The reason of the dropped semiconductor price was, firstly, the oversupply from their overinvestment. The competition in equipment establishment hit their stride from 1999 to 2000. The competition in world’s semiconductor industry was expanded after passing through three years of recession from 1996 to 1998. Especially in 2000, they invested $6.40 million that is an increase of 86% compared with the previous year. There were 4-6% oversupply of demands in 2000 and 5-8% oversupplies in 2001 when compared to the effect of invest in equipment from 1999 to 2000. Secondly, there was the decrease in supply from the IT industry depression, and the depression at the beginning of 2000s got worse according to the global financial downturn and the poor demands accordingly. World’s economy growth rapidly slowed with United States as the center from the 4th quarter of 2000, and went slow more clearly passing through the middle of 2001. As the reasons of deepening economic recession of late, there were three major unfavorable conditions such as the equipments and over production, a drop in inventory reduction rate, economic recession, etc. And it was the more serious situation than year 1985. In 1985, the economy struggled from over production and a drop in inventory reduction rate, but they maintained the stable level of 3.7%. The world’s economic recession made reduction in IT investments and decrease in consumption expenditure, and resulted recession in IT companies. 80 percent of investment accounts in American enterprises were spent in IT industries, and the investment growth rate was expected to decrease to 12.6% in 2000 and 1.9% in 2001. Weakening consumers’ incomes from the deterioration of U.S. stocks is interrupting the market recovery in the major consumption areas such as PC and appliances. The broad slump in IT industry demands such as in PC, mobile communication terminal, network equipment, etc. that is the major markets for semiconductors made the semiconductor market worse. Third, wrong management of chief executives of Hyundai Group was another reason. In 1998, Big Deal which can be considered as the Government’s representative structure adjustment program after IMF period just started. Big Deal in semiconductors which was accomplished despite the resistance from LG and politics in the name of enhancing competitiveness and blocking the overlapping investments in Semiconductor industry which is Korean main industry has increased DRAM market shares of Hynix, but took LG Semiconductor’s debts in the end. After they succeeded in Big Deal, Hyundai sold all of LCD businesses excepting semiconductors, reduced debts’ size, and promised to develop Hyundai as the company specializing in semiconductor. However, the policies of them who already acquired LG Semiconductor were directly opposite. They expanded telecommunication businesses, tumbled the affiliated Securities firms within the same financial group down into insolvent enterprises, and made minus debts. Hynix was damaged by DRAM price plunge, and their profitability was extremely lowered. According to the 1.4 quarter report that they released, 1.76 trillion won was aggregated as the 1st quarter sales of Hynix Semiconductor and 70 billion won as their operating profits. This result, compared to the 1st quarter of last year, shows that sales and operating profits were reduced by 13% and 7% respectively. It also shows that there was reduction of 14% and 7% each when they were compared to the 4th quarter of last year. Especially in the 3rd quarter, headquarters’ business achievements recorded their net loss as 1.62 trillion won and the extent of the loss was expanded from 1.55 trillion won which was the record of the last 2nd quarter. That is, Hynix Semiconductor performed the worst because of the extremely sluggish economy in Semiconductor industries during the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quarter of 2001 - Solutions of Hynix Decision to take over Hynix’s decision was to solve the problems through internal reconstructing. Government and creditors completely accepted Micron’s one-sided requirement as it is the only one alternative, entered into MOU in haste, and forced creditors meeting and the passing from Hynix’s board of directors. However, Hynix refused to MOU conclusion and decided to survive alone after their commitment discussed MOU contents and its subsequent restructuring plan and found the serious problem. Since Korean companies ranked the 1st and 2nd in the world’s DRAM market, they also expected the growing effect in DRAM market. The consolidated company between Hyundai Electronics and LG Semiconductor is going to have bigger size than world’s top Samsung Electronics. Korean companies are going to occupy approximately 40% in the market and rank the 1st and 2nd. Also, their increased market share was to enhance the initiative in Korean companies when considering technical development and price decision. Hynix undertook Blue Chip Project which realized high-tech manufacturing process at the smallest scale of investment and made the products having large-scale manufacturing lines. Also, in the world’s semiconductor history, they fulfilled in the fantasy of developing number one new technology at the lowest costs by developing Chip Family Project at the lowest costs, shortest term, and the first technology. Hynix reorganized export markets to be upgraded from the insolvent enterprise which had abundant amount of debts to the blue-chip companies, and operated the plants in America to avoid 30-40% taxes. Hynix sent Korean employees to American plant and armed themselves with global competitiveness, which became the driving force of the large manufacturing base. When Hynix was in danger of bankruptcy from the astronomical deficit of 1.1 trillion won, they judged this as unavoidable restructuring caused by the serious financial defects. Reducing 10 thousand out of 22 thousand employees, Hynix carried out a large-scale restructuring especially firing two thirds of executives. They also sold all of non-semiconductors and non-memory business such as cell phone LCD monitor system RC and concentrated only on semiconductors and NAND Flash business line. When competitors invested 1.5 billion won for upgrading, Hynix researchers succeeded to upgrade by effective research development such as renovating equipments all night. One thing we can find through Hynix’s policies for revival is that their stabilized labor-management relation was the only factor for them to overcome all the situations wisely when they faced many obstacles. Semiconductor industries need investment accounts, market volatility, have short product lifespan. Also, as the supply chain is complicated, gaining visibility and maximizing profitability without the optimized supply chain management system became hard. To solve these kinds of problems, Hynix Semiconductor started to establish the planning system for each unit of the plant since 2003 and set up sales demands and payment management system. They also established systems for each unit of plants, appointed model plants, and branched out their business on 15 sites. They established not only the global production planning system including the foreign production corporations (America, China, Taiwan) aimed for the integration of information and visibility but also the integrated system including the information of sales, manufacturing, and original prices. It made possible for multinational corporations to observe each different circumstance of the entrants based on the good resources and organization skills, accomplish competitive advantage with proper strategies and business activities, and successfully go into many parts of the world. Hynix opened their offices in India and Moscow in an effort to open new markets and to keep up with the requirements of overseas customers with their strategies, verifying portfolios to keep up to the broad range of demands that the global market requires. Also, they started memory market for cell phones and digital home appliances in earnest, revealing their joint development plans with M-systems in Israel for the next generation fusion memory. [Future direction proposals- the need for promotion] -Receiving spotlight Hynix is trying not only in semiconductor technology but also in providing environment-friendly products. Hynix took its place as the world’s first affiliated company on May 2010, participated in ‘Carbon Supply Chain 2010’ processed by Carbon Disclosure Project (“CDP”) as a member of ‘CDP Supply Chain 2009’, and led the major Supply Chain’s Carbon Disclosure Project. Hynix has the plan for expanding companies participating in the Project. Jung Yun-young, director of environment safety group at Hynix, said “Supply Chain’s acknowledgement, willingness, and practice are the opportunity and competitiveness for all companies.” In fact, Supply Chain’s Carbon management has became the main issue of business and the survey targeting 45 companies who joined the project last year as a member of ‘CDP Supply Chain 2009’ showed that 56 percent of those questioned are going to terminate future contracts with the companies who did not satisfy the Carbon management standards and 6 percent of them have already terminated the contracts. Also, some companies answered that they are going to include the point on the contract that they are going to improve Carbon management. After gaining the high-level evaluation and receiving the ‘Glacier Award' from CDP Korea, Hynix was highly rated in 2008 for the estimation of CO₂ emission and business relations and appointed as one of the best companies in Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index(CDLI). Hynix is getting patents for DRAM, NAND Flash, MCP, etc as the eco-friendly products and the companies in the same field are giving attention to Hynix’s next step. -Lack of promotion On the other hand, it is true that their promotion targeting the public has been weak and the reason seemed to be because Hynix’s major products are beyond the whole products like computer. Hynix has low level of brand awareness than their brand status. Even though Hynix is a B2B company, they had improved their brand image by advertising electronic devices such as electronic dictionary and cellular phone when they were a member of Hyundai Group in the past. Also, heavy industries like Doosan Infracore are developing their TV commercials. Hynix felt crisis about their current company image and, on 9 July 2011, they restarted their advertisement through media in ten years. However, some analysis showed that it could be the means to increase the value of company images before their takeover. Ja-woo Koo, a researcher at Kyobo Securities Co., Ltd., said “It could be regarded as the way of increasing the value of company as one inadvertently gets suspected by others, overlapping the period of buyout.” and “Since they experienced some tough times, however, it will be better to think in the way that Hynix is trying to improve their brand image at the time when they are making profits.” Young-Chan Kim, a researcher at Shinhan Investment Corp., explained “This advertisement was not made in a sudden.” And “They chose advertisement as one of the solutions to overcome economic crisis since they had problems with manpower supply and demand because of their bad brand image.” Hynix who has been grown up described their power through their commercial. Also, with the forest pictures, they showed Hynix’s win-win philosophy with the old ages and the customers from the affiliated company.” Especially the last scene showing Cheongju plant and Hynix members delivered the real aspects of Hynix that the members work very hard from the front lines. Jeongsu Kim, promotion director at Hynix, said “We started the advertisement, this time, to announce Hynix’s status not only to the nation but also to the persons concerned such as stakeholders and employees since Semiconductor has became considered as the key industry which is important to a national economy. And we aimed to deliver Hynix’s philosophy and values through our pictures, but not by the only one-time fancy ones.” Despite their explanation, it gives the impression that they are not delivering their brand and image properly. First of all, we are going to look at some advertisements of Samsung and Doosan Infracore. Figure 2 is a part of TV commercial of Galaxy S2. 
Figure 2 It is said that Hynix needs to promote their brand image more actively since Samsung Electronics developed many-sided business not only in semiconductors but also in smart phones, etc. Still, Hynix represents their image exactly by expressing their sophisticated and advanced technologies as well as the images of their products.  
Figure 3 Figure3 is the commercial of Doosan Infracore. Even though Doosan Infracore is in the heavy industry making ship and forklifts, etc., they in such a new and striking way included their own products in the commercial to improve their image. 
Figure 4 Instead, Hynix(Figure 4) had rather simple pictures compared to those two companies above by showing pine forest and Hynix plant. By this, people can expect Hynix as the semiconductor-making company, but Hynix still need to supplement more in the sense that they have lack of creativity which is the significant factor in IT industries. [Appendix] -Thanks to We appreciate KIMF members nominating us for Top 10. It was a very meaningful time to listen to Korean university students’ enthusiastic presentations. We shared marketing case study, strengthened our weaknesses, and we built personal relationships as well. Even though we did not succeed in entering the top 10 in rankings, we learnt a lot from the case studies and presentations. We could learn new ways of research by attending this presentation and we are going to try to make better presentation with this experience. Once again, we appreciate KIMF members for giving us participation prize at this contest. -Thoughts of the members Dong-kyun Park: Hynix is now promoting their products by manufacturing and selling memory semiconductors all over the world after passing through their depression period. Also, they recently took second place in world’s semiconductor industry despite their unfavorable conditions in world’s market such as DRAM prices dropping. They could make a good result as now by the research of manufacturing process and supplier facilities improvement study, and they are expected to make a precious result when considering their R&D status, portfolio management strategy, etc. In the long run, there will be no big problem in liquidating Hynix when it comes to their M&A with other major companies and Hynix will make synergy effect by their enormous investment of their funds. Environment for semiconductor markets, as compared to their positive outcomes, is rather pessimistic. First of all, Hynix cannot avoid to face shrinking since Samsung Electronics, whose market share is the number one in the world for their memory semiconductors, largely invested in equipments and human resources development with their enormous financial power. Hynix can also be in danger if they do not react as fast as the change speed of the memory chip industry which repeats boom -bust cycles by periods. In order to overcome a crisis in the short run, they should prepare plans for cost savings in responding to the excessively dropped DRAM market price. Also, it is important to invest radically and procure technologies in order to survive in Chinese market grown by Samsung Electronics and low price policy. Hynix should keep their technologies, obtaining their patents and not make any losses. Hynix has grown rapidly with Hyundai group’s peculiar enterprise in its beginning period. With their full of challenges, Hynix is now producing a remarkable accomplishment despite the poor domestic environment. Other firms should let this be a good lesson by clearly investigating this example. Min-young Park: It was a good opportunity to analyze how Hynix overcame their depression period. It was also a meaningful time to expand the knowledge and thoughts of all participants who hope to go abroad in the future. This experience, I believe, will be helpful for the small and medium-sized business as well to extend its business abroad. This experience, for sure, will affect the students who want to introduce our national brand, South Korea, to the world and inspire their patriotism. REFERENCES Hynix (http://www.hynix.com) Ministry of Knowledge Economy (http://www.mke.go.kr) E-daily (http://www.edaily.co.kr) Hynix Annual Business Report (http://dart.fss.or.kr) Sin Il Kang, The restriction of semiconductor industry and the problems in future Yoon Jong Jang and Sang Yeon Lee, The Constitution change of DRAM semiconductor industry and the problems of Hynix, (Monthly) KIET Industrial Economic Review, 2001.12 Dae Young Joo, The competition aspect change of the semiconductor industry and the trend of workout, (Monthly) KIET Industrial Economic Review, 2002.11 Directory: learning -> data learning -> 1. Why is computer known as data processor? data -> Case # Samsung Galaxy Series How Samsung Galaxy Became a No. 1 Brand in the World learning -> The incorporation of mobile learning into mainstream education and training learning -> Student-Friendly app writing Assessment Focuses – Levels 5 8 learning -> Proposal to Develop the apl in Academia learning -> English department medium term plan learning -> Rather than reality informing political decisions, political convenience creates reality in the world of learning -> Learning Mathematics: Perspectives of Australian Aboriginal children and their teachers Peter Howard learning -> Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: Population and Mobility Patterns Download 68.32 Kb. Share with your friends:
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