South Korea's two major memory chip giants, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, released their "strongest ever" financial reports, with the two companies achieving a combined operating profit of nearly 40 trillion won (approximately US$27.8 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2025, equivalent to a net profit of US$300 million per day. The core driver is the strong demand for HBM (High-Bandwidth Memory), with AI giants such as Nvidia, AMD, Google, and Microsoft lining up to purchase it. On the other hand, technological barriers exist. Globally, only three companies can produce HBM: SK Hynix holds a 57% market share, Samsung 22%, and Micron only 21%. This results in a single piece of HBM, the size of a fingernail, costing as much as US$400-500, more expensive than its equivalent weight in gold. Another factor, as discussed a few days ago, is that last year these memory manufacturers suppressed capacity expansion and instead continuously raised prices, leading to soaring profits. However, price increases are ultimately limited, and each company has recently announced capacity expansion plans to cope with the surging demand. However, the expansion plans of various companies remain relatively rational, without any large-scale expansion. This has actually fueled market expectations of both increased volume and price. Let's see how explosive tonight's flash memory earnings reports will be!

Have you boarded the bus?

I bought Micron products in late November during the market correction, and I was also looking at flash memory at the time. I felt Micron had a more comprehensive product line, so I figured I should have bought them all 😂