Memory is the bottleneck for AI, and the shortage is real
Elon Musk amplified a post calling memory, not compute, the limit for AI, and memory stocks ran. The shortage is real: demand is growing far faster than supply, and the new SK Hynix and Micron plants do not open until 2027 and 2028.
Applied Materials (AMAT) posted a record quarter and guided higher. Shares fell in extended trading
Applied Materials posted its highest quarterly revenue ever, beat Wall Street on both lines and guided the fall quarter higher. The stock still fell. DRAM is now 26% of equipment sales.
SK Square rose 9% on Wednesday, more than SK Hynix itself. The difference is a payout SK Hynix hasn't announced yet.
On August 13, SK Hynix rose almost 6% with an overnight US chip rally. SK Square, the holding company that owns about 20% of SK Hynix, rose 9%, more than the chipmaker itself. The difference is a payout SK Hynix hasn't announced yet.
South Korea makes first-time leveraged fund buyers practice before risking real money. Trading in those funds already fell to one-thirteenth of its level.
From August 19, Koreans buying a single-stock leverage or inverse ETF for the first time will have to complete five days of mock trading, about five hours in all, before they can put in real money. It comes on top of a 30 million won ($21,200 USD) cash deposit that already cut trading in these funds to about one-thirteenth of its level.
SK Hynix just became the biggest shareholder of Japan's Kioxia. A deal it signed in 2018 blocks it from taking control until 2028.
SK Hynix indirectly became Kioxia's largest shareholder through a 2018 convertible-bond deal, but a voting cap and antitrust hurdles keep it from taking control. The same week, its Solidigm unit moved to restart a stalled NAND plant in China.
Samsung catches SK Hynix on HBM4 as 2027 forecasts flip the race
Samsung has lifted its HBM4 yield to about 80% in six months, level with SK Hynix. For the first time, UBS and KB Securities expect Samsung to pass SK Hynix in high-bandwidth memory in 2027, turning a technology race into a contest over who can supply Nvidia at scale.
Samsung carried the Kospi on Tuesday on growth beyond memory. It rose 4.13% while SK Hynix stayed flat.
Samsung Electronics rose 4.13% on Tuesday and carried the Kospi higher while SK Hynix barely moved. Strong August chip exports lifted both, but Samsung has a foundry business and a new robot unit that give investors a reason to own it beyond memory.
SK Hynix's Solidigm would be the fourth listed company in one SK chain. Korea's new rule has a 10% hole.
If SK Hynix's Solidigm lists on the Nasdaq, four listed SK companies would sit in a single line of control. Korea's new duplicate listing rule exempts subsidiaries that are under 10% of the parent, and Solidigm is under it on all three tests.
Korea's young and old borrowed to chase stocks. Then the market fell 43.9%, and they started missing payments.
Data the Financial Supervisory Service prepared for a lawmaker on August 9 shows 63% of the money borrowed against Korea's five most valuable stocks belongs to investors 60 and over. The two age groups now falling behind on their bank loans are the youngest borrowers and the oldest.
Kospi just fell for a seventh straight week. SK Hynix (SKHY) says its bigger shareholder payout plan is coming by September 30.
Kospi closed out a seventh straight losing week on August 7, its longest slide since 2022. Two days after SK Hynix said a bigger shareholder payout was coming by year end, it moved that promise up to the third quarter.
Max your 401k match, Roth IRA and HSA before you touch a single stock. Index funds come next, individual stocks come last.
The order I'd actually go in: 401k match, then Roth IRA and HSA, then a broad index fund (or X Money if you want zero market risk), then mega-caps and dividend ETFs, then single stocks last.
SK Hynix approved $38 billion for two new chip plants, one for AI memory and one for NAND flash. The first cleanroom doesn't open until December 2028.
SK Hynix's board approved 54.3 trillion won ($38.3B USD) on August 7 for two new chip plants, one in Yongin for DRAM and one in Cheongju for NAND. Neither makes a chip before 2028, and the company also moved up its 2045 completion target for the whole Yongin cluster to 2033.
SK Hynix's US chip unit is reportedly heading toward Nasdaq. Korea's new spinoff rule might not actually apply.
SK Hynix's US NAND unit Solidigm is raising money toward a possible Nasdaq listing worth up to 50 trillion won ($35.3B USD), four days after Korea's new rule on subsidiary listings took effect. Solidigm wasn't created the way the rule defines a spinoff, so the toughest part of it might not apply.
Korea's stocks crashed. So why is the won hitting a 10-month high?
A falling stock market and heavy foreign selling usually pull a currency down. This week they didn't. The Korean won reached its strongest level against the dollar in about 10 months, helped by exporters selling dollars, SK Hynix's Nasdaq listing, and a softer dollar everywhere.
Korean investors dumped SK Hynix (SKHY) after a report on Nvidia's Rubin Ultra chip. Some analysts say the selloff went too far.
A report says Nvidia is testing versions of its next AI chip that carry less high-bandwidth memory than planned, some with an older kind. SK Hynix, which makes most of that memory, fell about 15% in two days, though some analysts in Korea think the reaction is too big.
SK Hynix reached a $70 billion cash target in four months. It denied a report that shareholders would receive a similar amount.
SK Hynix set a 100 trillion won ($70B USD) net cash target in March and reached it by summer. A June report said it would return a similar amount to shareholders, and the company denied it. Analysts are now landing near the same number anyway.
Samsung and SK Hynix (SKHY) said they will expand shareholder returns. Neither gave a number, and SK Hynix fell 7% in Thursday's first hour.
Both companies sent statements to Reuters on Wednesday, a day after the US rule that had kept SK Hynix quiet since its Nasdaq listing expired. SK Hynix said a concrete plan is coming by the end of the year. Samsung named no date at all. Seoul had already priced in more than that.
Korea’s Kosdaq fell below 800 and left 307 companies facing delisting. Four sessions later it was up 24%.
Two weeks ago the Kosdaq was under 800 with 307 companies facing delisting tests. It has now risen 24% in four sessions, and on three of them the buying was fast enough that the Korea Exchange froze program orders, something that has never happened three days in a row before.
Musk says memory demand grows 200% a year against 20% supply. The new Micron (MU) and SK Hynix (SKHY) plants open in 2027 and 2028
Elon Musk did the memory math out loud on SpaceX's call: supply up 20% a year, demand up 200%. Microsoft put $25 billion of its capex on memory and Amazon named it too. The plants that would fix it open in 2027 and 2028.
CoreWeave (CRWV) secured priority SSD supply from SK Hynix's Solidigm in a multi-year deal, but key terms weren't disclosed.
CoreWeave announced a multi-year agreement with Solidigm for priority access to enterprise SSD capacity. The release carried no dollar value, no term length and no capacity figure, which is not how CoreWeave's $21 billion Meta agreement read. Enterprise SSD contract prices rose about 80% in the first quarter.
Korean media says Apple (AAPL) asked CXMT for cheaper memory. CXMT quoted more than Samsung and SK Hynix (SKHY)
Digital Daily reported on August 5 that Apple asked China's CXMT to lower its price on LPDDR5X mobile memory and was refused. CXMT quoted the same as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, or higher, and the floor under ordinary memory prices held.
Bloomberg said Korea's stock market is becoming uninvestable. The regulator fired back that night, over one number.
A Bloomberg Opinion column counted 33 days this year when the Kospi moved 5% or more, against four for the Nikkei and none for the Hang Seng. Korea's Financial Services Commission called its forced-selling figure unsourced.
Palantir (PLTR) grew revenue 93%, raised its full-year forecast by $500 million, and is still a third below its high.
Palantir reported second quarter revenue of $1.935 billion, up 93% from a year earlier, and adjusted earnings of $0.41 a share. It raised full year revenue guidance by about $500 million. Shares were up more than 8% in early after-hours trading.
The AI trade rallied Monday. Memory fell as much as 8% at the open even as chip prices kept rising.
Micron (MU) has lost a third of its value since June 25 and SanDisk nearly half. CoreWeave and Vertiv fell about half as far, and Nvidia rose. Memory contract prices never fell. What changed is the rate of increase, which went from 93-98% a quarter to a forecast 13-18%.