IT Home News on October 25: According to a report by the Korean media Chosunbiz, Nomura Securities issued an optimistic forecast on the 20th, believing that despite slowing revenue growth at AI companies and concerns over financing prospects, global memory chip demandwill continue to maintain rapid growth until 2028。
In its latest global memory chip industry report, Nomura Securities named Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix as top recommended stocks,All are given a "Buy" rating, with target prices of 670,000 won (IT之家 note: approximately 3,380 RMB at the current exchange rate) and 4.7 million won (approximately 23,712 RMB at the current exchange rate), respectively.
Nomura believes thatMarkets are overly worried about the outlook for AI investment., the strong momentum in the memory chip industry is expected to last for a considerable period.
Recently, bond prices of AI company CoreWeave have plunged, financing pressure has intensified, and markets worry that AI companiesmay consequently cut capital expenditures. At the same time, the technological progress of Chinese memory chip manufacturer ChangXin Memory has also raised market concerns about an increase in memory chip supply.
Nomura believes thatthe market has overestimated the risk of AI companies cutting demand. The firm estimates that OpenAI and Anthropic's combined revenue in the third quarter of this year grew 507% year over year, but to reach market expectations for full-year revenue, the two companies still need to achieve substantial growth in the fourth quarter.
Nomura also believes that the funding difficulties faced by data center operators such as CoreWeave are unlikely to bring investment activity across the entire AI industry to a standstill. The firm explained that risks for individual businesses may rise, but data centers and equipment that have already been built can also be used by other operators.
Nomura is bullish on Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, mainly because of the continued expansion of data centers worldwide. According to the data it tracks, global data centers are expected to add 22.3GW of new capacity this year,rising to 31.5GW next year。
Nomura expects memory chip demand growth to continue outpacing supply growth, thereby providing support for prices. The combined net cash of 9 semiconductor companies including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix will grow from 282 billion US dollars in the second quarter of this year (approximately 1.89 trillion RMB at current exchange rates)to 2 trillion US dollars by the end of 2028(approximately 13.38 trillion RMB at current exchange rates).
Nomura also pointed out that if data center investment plans continue to be scaled back or postponed, memory chip demand forecasts would need to be reassessed.