Signage for SK Hynix Inc. is displayed on access gates at the entrance to the company's office in Seongnam, South Korea, on Monday, July 24, 2017.

South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix reported its smallest quarterly earnings in three years on Thursday as slumping memory prices drove an 89% drop in second-quarter operating profit.

The world's second-largest memory chip maker behind Samsung Electronics said April-June profit was 638 billion won ($541.9 million), missing a 828 billion won Refinitiv SmartEstimate.

SmartEstimates give more weight to recent estimates by analysts who are more consistently accurate.

To cope with the slowing chip market, the company said investment next year was expected to be "significantly lower" than this year.

Prices of NAND flash memory chips have fallen sharply over the past year as output grew faster than demand and the U.S.-China trade war played havoc with global markets for electronics like smartphones.

Prices for DRAM chips, which help devices perform multiple tasks, declined 25% in the second quarter from three months earlier, according to data from tech researcher TrendForce.