Goldman Sachs’ view: The storage market is showing structural changes; using NAND to partially replace DRAM to cut costs has become a real trend

BlockBeats, July 16: Citirni analyst Jukan cited Goldman Sachs’ monthly conference call comments on the memory sector. Customers strongly resisted DRAM price increases approaching 30%, so the firm slightly lowered its third-quarter DRAM price growth outlook. At the same time, the NAND outlook became more optimistic—AI-related KV Cache offload demand has continued to exceed expectations, and an emerging trend of using NAND instead of expensive DRAM has appeared in the market, further supporting NAND demand. The analyst took a positive view of SK hynix’s second-quarter performance, forecasting revenue of about 85 trillion Korean won, with a gross margin as high as 63%. Relevant stocks include SK hynix, Micron, and SanDisk.

The commentary also reveals structural changes in the storage market. Previously, the explosive demand from AI servers for HBM drove DRAM prices sharply higher, but once the increase reached 30%, customers began to resist further price hikes, and the pace of price increases is facing a temporary slowdown. Meanwhile, NAND is taking a new role in AI infrastructure—KV Cache is crucial in inference scenarios, and using cheaper NAND to partially replace expensive DRAM to reduce costs is becoming an actual trend. This divergence also suggests that capital rotation within the storage industry chain may continue. Investors should be more cautious about near-term earnings expectations for DRAM-related stocks, while improvements in NAND fundamentals may not yet be fully priced in.