SEOUL -- South Korea's Hyundai Motor said Tuesday that supplies of semiconductors for automobiles will normalize from July on an expected recovery in chipmakers' production capacity in the third quarter of this year, as it announced a jump in fourth-quarter 2021 operating profit led by sales of SUVs and its Genesis luxury brand.
"We expect that the auto chip supply shortage will persist in the first quarter of this year due to the spread of the omicron variant and automakers' stockpiling of chips," Seo Gang-hyun, a vice president at the company, said during an earnings conference call. "We forecast it will gradually improve in the second quarter and normalize in the third quarter as semiconductor manufacturers' capacity will recover."
