KB Securities said on the 15th that starting next year, as the memory semiconductor cycle expands to servers and high-bandwidth memory (HBM), an unprecedented supply shortage is expected.
Kim Dong-Won, head of research at KB Securities, said, "In the third quarter of this year, global semiconductor sales hit a record high of 318 trillion won, up 15% from the previous quarter, driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and memory," and added, "Global semiconductor sales this year are expected to increase 24% from a year earlier to 1,180 trillion won, topping 1,000 trillion for the first time."
Kim predicted that starting next year, the semiconductor cycle will expand from the current HBM-centric phase to server memory and HBM, leading to an unprecedented supply shortage. With AI inference workloads expanding and cloud companies spreading AI application services, server data throughput is increasing, and demand for HBM, server DRAM, and enterprise solid-state drives (eSSD) is surging simultaneously.
While HBM is key in the training stage of AI models, once AI services commercialize and evolve into the inference stage, demand for server DRAM to handle large volumes of data will also grow rapidly.
Kim said, "Next year's HBM4 prices are expected to command a 28%–58% premium over HBM3E depending on product speed and specs," adding, "The semiconductor market is expected to enter a megacycle beyond a supercycle."
Kim added, "In particular, Samsung Electronics, which has a diversified application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) customer base centered on big tech companies, is expected to see its HBM shipments triple next year from a year earlier, with its HBM market share expanding more than twofold from 16% this year to 35% next year," and said, "Despite having the world's largest DRAM production capacity, it is trading at the lowest valuation levels, and is set to enter a phase of resolving extreme undervaluation."