IT Home, October 25 — According to Korean media Chosunbiz, Nomura Securities issued an optimistic forecast on the 20th, predicting that global demand for memory chips will continue to grow rapidly until 2028, despite slowing revenue growth among AI companies and concerns over financing prospects.
In its latest global memory chip industry report, Nomura Securities listed Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix as top recommended stocks, both with a "Buy" rating and target prices of 670,000 KRW (approximately RMB 3,380 at current exchange rates) and 4.7 million KRW (approximately RMB 23,712 at current exchange rates), respectively.
Nomura Securities believes the market is overly concerned about the prospects of AI investment, and the strong performance in the memory chip industry is expected to last for an extended period.
Recently, bond prices of AI company CoreWeave have plummeted, intensifying its funding pressures, and raising market concerns that AI companies may cut capital expenditures. Meanwhile, technological advancements by Chinese memory chip manufacturer CXMT have sparked worries about increased supply of memory chips.
Nomura Securities believes the market has overestimated the risk of AI companies reducing demand. The firm estimates that OpenAI and Anthropic combined achieved a 507% year-over-year revenue growth in the third quarter, but both companies still need to achieve significant growth in the fourth quarter to meet market expectations for full-year revenue.
Nomura also believes that the funding difficulties faced by data center operators like CoreWeave are unlikely to halt investment activity across the entire AI industry. The firm explained that while risks for individual businesses may rise, existing data centers and equipment can still be utilized by other operators.
Nomura Securities is bullish on Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, primarily due to the ongoing expansion of global data centers. According to its tracked data, global data center capacity is expected to increase by 22.3 GW this year and rise to 31.5 GW next year.
Nomura Securities expects demand growth for memory chips to continue outpacing supply growth, providing support for prices. Nine semiconductor companies, including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, are projected to see their combined net cash increase from $282 billion in the second quarter of this year (approximately RMB 1.89 trillion at current exchange rates) to $2 trillion by the end of 2028 (approximately RMB 13.38 trillion at current exchange rates).
Nomura Securities also noted that if data center investment plans continue to be scaled back or delayed, storage chip demand forecasts will need to be reassessed.