Kiwoom Securities said on the 10th that, amid a U.S.-driven artificial intelligence (AI) arms race, demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) next year is set to triple. It kept a Buy rating and a 140,000 won target price. Samsung Electronics' previous trading day closing price was 108,400 won.
Park Yuak, a Kiwoom Securities researcher, said "the HBM market size will grow significantly next year." That is because the HBM capacity installed in Microsoft's application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chip Maia200 will jump to 288GB, and Google's tensor processing unit (TPU) V7e is increasing its HBM capacity.
Specifically, Samsung Electronics, whose main customers are ASIC users, is expected to see its total HBM shipments in 2026 surge threefold from this year. Accordingly, Samsung Electronics' HBM institutional sector is expected to record total bit shipments of 11.1 billion Gb, up about 212% year over year in 2026, and revenue of 2.65 trillion won, up 197%.
The intensifying AI power struggle is also a factor boosting demand. Park said "in 2027, the HBM market size will expand sharply due to fierce competition between Nvidia's Rubin Ultra and ASIC chips."
Samsung Electronics is currently supplying HBM to Nvidia as well, so it is expected to benefit. Park explained that "in the second quarter of 2026, shipments of HBM4 to be mounted on Nvidia Rubin will begin in earnest."
Park also saw potential for new demand. He analyzed, "Meta is likely to emerge rapidly as a new HBM customer by adopting HBM3e instead of existing LPDDR5 for MTIA v3 slated for release in 2026. Amazon is expected to steadily increase HBM installation volume next year, following this year."
Factors beyond HBM that could improve results were also mentioned. He said, "due to Micron's NAND supply cuts and rising eSSD demand, NAND supply and demand are getting tighter than expected," adding, "there is a high possibility that fixed NAND prices in the first half of 2026 will beat market expectations, which will serve as an additional driver for Samsung Electronics' earnings."