Overview
- Samsung Electronics, which issued Tuesday's preliminary Q1 guidance, projected KRW 133 trillion in sales and KRW 57.2 trillion in operating profit, both all-time highs.
- The surge stems from tight supplies of high-bandwidth memory and DRAM for AI data centers, where HBM is stacked memory that feeds chips such as Nvidia's accelerators.
- Following Wednesday's rally, Samsung shares rose more than 7% to 210,500 won, SK Hynix jumped as much as 15% to 1,050,000 won, and Samsung Group's market value neared 1,600 trillion won.
- Analysts say most profit came from memory with logic units losing money, and they estimate phone earnings fell to about 2.5 trillion won as pricier memory squeezed margins.
- Brokerages raised forecasts and targets, citing likely long-term supply deals and more price hikes, with TrendForce seeing DRAM contract prices rising over 50% this quarter.