Nomura significantly raises target prices for Samsung and SK Hynix, AI-driven memory demand grows exponentially

AIMPACT News, May 18 (UTC+8): Nomura issued a report saying that demand driven by artificial intelligence is growing exponentially, while memory supply is limited, and it expects memory stocks to see a valuation reappraisal. The bank significantly raised its target prices for Samsung Electronics and SK hynix: Samsung’s target price increased from 340,000 won to 590,000 won, and SK hynix’s target price rose from 2.34 million won to 4.0 million won. Both ratings are “Buy.” Nomura said that as AI semiconductor demand shifts from training to inference workloads, memory demand is entering a period of exponential expansion. By contrast, the bank believes that industry supply growth over the same period may still be limited to about 5 to 6 times (with a compound annual growth rate of about 30%), raising serious questions about whether structural shortages of supply can truly be resolved. The bank noted that, currently, the industry is trying to narrow the widening supply-demand gap through various software and architecture-level optimizations, but Nomura believes these solutions can only slow the pace of growth rather than reverse the trend. (Source: ChainCatcher)