Just last month, everyone was still saying: “Hynix and Samsung’s profits are higher than all of the semiconductor industry combined.”

Now it has turned into de-leveraging, too crowded, cycle talk, and the idea that memory capex makes up too high a proportion of total spending—leaving people skeptical about the model’s ability to generate business profits.

Lately has been the most painful stretch since I held the memory segment. Especially this time, it’s not the broad sell-off in March—the Mag 7 is bouncing back—yet the memory sector is leading the rout, plunging lower. After the ADR listings, it feels like the last breath of “life support” has been cut off.

On April 23, SK Hynix released its Q1 financial results for this year. Operating profit reached 37.6 trillion won ($25.4 billion), up 405% year over year, beating the market expectation of 35.7 trillion won. That day, SK’s stock price was 1,250,000 won.

On May 5, Samsung released its 2026 Q1 annual earnings report. Q1 revenue was 133.9 trillion won (about $91.0 billion), and operating profit was 57.2 trillion won (about $38.8–$39.0 billion). That day, the stock traded around 266,000 won.

On June 24, Micron’s FY2026 Q3 earnings report showed revenue of $41.46 billion, beating market expectations by nearly $6 billion. After-hours, the stock jumped directly by 13% to 14%. On the day, the share price was around $1,000.

Over the next few weeks, the storage space is entering an information-dense month: TSMC on July 16, Samsung on July 23, and Hynix and Western Digital on July 29.

So far, I haven’t seen any signs of demand slowing. Of course, strong earnings don’t necessarily mean strong stock performance. But based on my view, the stock prices really aren’t expensive right now.

There’s another risk coming from politics and policy:
The logic is—if the profit of the Korean storage giants is extremely concentrated and they take the lion’s share of AI-related profits, it could trigger U.S. political pressure or policy intervention.
From the hints SK Hynix has recently slipped about being able to set up a factory in the U.S., it seems political negotiations are already under way and being priced in.