HBM

Horizon_Labs7244

I'm a long-term growth investor, and memory is the part of the AI trade I find hardest to underwrite. The interesting bit here is the multi-year contracts covering most of 2027 output. The old memory playbook was spot price swings, so if those contracts hold, earnings should be less cyclical than past cycles. That said, the 555T won forecast leans on HBM prices rising 100-150%, which I'd treat as the bull case rather than the base case. And a 19% drop right alongside these numbers reads to me like the market worrying about AI capex sustainability, not Samsung's own execution. I'd rather see the contracted numbers show up in a couple of actual quarters before sizing up.

AcidlyOldTendon

the demand curve bends eventually, it's not a straight line up forever. memory makers are riding high on AI margins but if regular consumers stop buying phones and laptops, that volume drop hits their fabs eventually. can't just run all that capacity on HBM alone the part that gets me is when it hits the midrange, that's where most of the volume lives. someone skipping a flagship is one thing but when a $300 phone becomes a $400 phone because of memory cost, whole segments drop out short term the AI trade probably keeps the stocks pumped but 2027 feels optimistic if the consumer side keeps cratering at this rate

InternationalKiwi401

the 80% contracted part is the bit that matters to me. if most of 2027 production is already locked in on long term deals the spot price panic matters a lot less. HBM pricing up 100-150% on that contracted volume is where the earnings leverage comes from, not the stock bouncing around on macro headlines.

rdh2dmd

What? Samsung invested 270 billion towards 6 more fabs in the Yongin Cluster, and 300 billion more to build 2 more fabs in Korea's southwest province, footing 80% of the utility expansion costs to speed it up That's in addition to P4 and P5 under construction in Pyeongtaek. They never expected HBM demand to be this high. Not increasing supply is just reddit framing.

Ill-Dragonfly-8372

The shift to HBM4 chips, which will target 80% of its market next year, is an extremely formidable strategic move, especially given SK Hynix's dominance of the AI ​​memory market.

nicolas_06

Again I can get DRAM and SSD when I want it. . It being expensive doens't mean unavailable. It very different with high end GPU and HBM that are not available. Also if it is expensive cloud provider will ask more. It isn't like it's magic way to avoid the high price.

confused_teabagger

HBM optional

h8beinsober08

Literally just buy GPUS with HBM attached and get rich

Public_Umpire_1099

Exactly, it is such a wild take. Quality GPU cores and HBM are quite literally some of the hardest things to manufacture. Huawei, with full backing from the Chinese govt cant even make GPUs equivalent to what AMD and NVIDIA produced 4 years ago.

zer00eyz

\> collateral is worth less than the paper Well I wanted to know how ugly it was... The easiest thing to figure out turned out to be cost per bit of ram, and the how the debt fueled premium was playing back into the system. I had AI pull this together and spot checked it - it's late here and I need to get some sleep but figured I would share. (maybe someone else corrects my work). In theory the ram in the systems backing the loans drops 75% over night. The bonds and stocks being sold are propping up 200% overvaluation in the goods being purchased. Thats like paying for the house and closing on it, and it burning to the ground before you sign the insurance paperwork. # Micron Technology: Quarterly Stock Price, Revenue, Bit Volume & ASP Metrics (FY2020 – FY2026) |Fiscal Quarter|Stock Price ($)|Net Revenue ($B)|Total Bits (EB)|**ASP per Bit ($/Gb)**|**ASP per Byte ($/GB)**|**Pricing Premium vs. Trough (%)**|**Equity Value per Bit ($/Gb)**|Pricing & Cycle Dynamic| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |**Q1 '20**|**$47.50**|**$5.14**|36.5|**$0.1408**|**$1.13**|**+150.7%**|$1.46|Pre-pandemic baseline across cloud and 5G mobile.| |**Q2 '20**|**$52.80**|**$4.80**|42.4|**$0.1132**|**$0.91**|**+101.6%**|$1.39|Initial COVID supply chain buffer building.| |**Q3 '20**|**$47.10**|**$5.44**|46.6|**$0.1167**|**$0.93**|**+107.9%**|$1.13|Work-from-home surge in client notebooks and hyperscaler cloud.| |**Q4 '20**|**$45.10**|**$6.06**|49.4|**$0.1227**|**$0.98**|**+118.4%**|$1.02|Bit volume expanded to record highs while pricing held steady.| |**Q1 '21**|**$64.10**|**$5.77**|53.7|**$0.1074**|**$0.86**|**+91.3%**|$1.34|Global chip shortage begins; bit demand exceeds capacity.| |**Q2 '21**|**$94.00**|**$6.24**|59.1|**$0.1056**|**$0.84**|**+88.0%**|$1.78|Stock hits $94 as market anticipates memory undersupply.| |**Q3 '21**|**$82.50**|**$7.42**|64.6|**$0.1149**|**$0.92**|**+104.5%**|$1.43|Enterprise SSD and server DRAM ASPs rise.| |**Q4 '21**|**$73.80**|**$8.27**|69.6|**$0.1188**|**$0.95**|**+111.6%**|$1.19|Peak FY21 net profitability ($5.86B net income).| |**Q1 '22**|**$84.00**|**$7.69**|74.5|**$0.1032**|**$0.83**|**+83.8%**|$1.26|Broad-based demand across enterprise, mobile, and automotive.| |**Q2 '22**|**$89.40**|**$7.79**|79.9|**$0.0975**|**$0.78**|**+73.6%**|$1.25|Pre-downturn quarterly shipment volume high (79.9 EB).| |**Q3 '22**|**$73.90**|**$8.64**|79.0|**$0.1094**|**$0.87**|**+94.7%**|$1.05|All-time pre-AI revenue record; consumer demand cliff begins.| |**Q4 '22**|**$56.30**|**$6.64**|71.4|**$0.0930**|**$0.74**|**+65.6%**|$0.88|Demand freeze; customers slash orders to consume inventory.| |**Q1 '23**|**$58.40**|**$4.09**|65.9|**$0.0621**|**$0.50**|**+10.5%**|$0.99|Micron cuts capex and wafer starts by 20% to curb oversupply.| |**Q2 '23**|**$57.80**|**$3.69**|65.7|**$0.0562**|**$0.45**|**0.0% (Trough)**|$0.98|**Cycle Trough:** ASPs crash to $0.056/Gb; -$1.43B inventory write-down.| |**Q3 '23**|**$68.20**|**$3.75**|70.9|**$0.0529**|**$0.42**|**-5.8%**|$1.08|Memory pricing bottoms; client inventory levels normalize.| |**Q4 '23**|**$69.90**|**$4.01**|78.4|**$0.0511**|**$0.41**|**-9.0%**|$1.00|Trough bit-clearing pricing before AI demand inflection.| |**Q1 '24**|**$75.70**|**$4.73**|87.2|**$0.0542**|**$0.43**|**-3.4%**|$0.97|Generative AI memory orders emerge; ASPs begin inflection.| |**Q2 '24**|**$90.00**|**$5.82**|86.6|**$0.0672**|**$0.54**|**+19.7%**|$1.16|HBM3E qualification; NAND ASPs jump +30% sequentially.| |**Q3 '24**|**$129.50**|**$6.81**|90.8|**$0.0750**|**$0.60**|**+33.5%**|$1.60|Cleanroom capacity diverted to HBM3E; pricing surges.| |**Q4 '24**|**$96.10**|**$7.75**|102.1|**$0.0759**|**$0.61**|**+35.2%**|$1.05|Full FY24 revenue reaches $25.11B; TTM EPS returns to profit.| |**Q1 '25**|**$97.45**|**$8.71**|114.1|**$0.0763**|**$0.61**|**+36.0%**|$0.96|High-margin 24GB 8-High HBM3E volume deliveries ramp.| |**Q2 '25**|**$92.50**|**$8.05**|124.3|**$0.0648**|**$0.52**|**+15.3%**|$0.83|Enterprise SSD and DDR5 adoption deepens.| |**Q3 '25**|**$94.20**|**$9.30**|138.0|**$0.0674**|**$0.54**|**+20.0%**|$0.76|CY2025 HBM capacity allocation fully sold out.| |**Q4 '25**|**$118.80**|**$11.32**|154.9|**$0.0731**|**$0.58**|**+30.1%**|$0.86|Full FY25 revenue reaches $37.38B; net profit margin 27.7%.| |**Q1 '26**|**$236.50**|**$13.64**|174.7|**$0.0781**|**$0.62**|**+39.0%**|$1.52|Mass ramp of 12-High HBM3E and HBM4; stock crosses $200.| |**Q2 '26**|**$412.40**|**$23.86**|202.3|**$0.1179**|**$0.94**|**+110.0%**|$2.28|Severe AI cluster memory shortages; ASP jumps 51% QoQ.| |**Q3 '26**|**$971.00**|**$41.46**|233.3|**$0.1777**|**$1.42**|**+216.4%**|$4.66|Hyperscaler gigawatt buildouts; stock hits $1,255 peak.| |**Q4 '26**|**$1,065.10**|**$54.23**|265.5|**$0.2043**|**$1.63**|**+263.7%**|$4.49|**Record Peak:** ASP reaches $0.204/Gb ($1.63/GB), a +264% premium over trough.|

bubblegum-rose

Lmao exactly No options, just 5x leverage ETFs, Korean HBM stocks, options, my moms credit card, and Overwatch classic credits

HarithBK

in terms of company selling goods for profit even large profits yes demand should remain high for at least the entire next year even if all AI build out stopped and went bankrupt along with a massive sale of hardware. this simply boils down to what the fab space was used for the HBM memory just isn't used for other things so you can't just shift and resell it to cover the gap that has formed. so there is a massive gut of demand for normal memory that will take at least a year even if Chinese fabs really starts cranking out memory as well. however "high" prices aren't the same thing as what AI companies have been paying out to secure what they need. so the stocks should reflect that along with the expected reduction in profit margin with time as they catch up on demand.

moorhound

Why would you need the massive throughput if youre crunching the weight size, the massive amount of data is the whole reason for requiring HBM

h8beinsober08

Your confusing a few things here... Memory capacity and Memory bandwidth for one Hbm is used for throughput and concurrency not storage capacity Quantization makes local edge devices smarter and lets data centers pack more concurrent users onto existing HBM it does not kill the need for high-bandwidth data center silicon. Samsung breakthrough is great for on edge device compute that's its and everyone in the industry is already aware

moorhound

Alright, I'm a little buzzed, pretty high, and bearin the fuck out. There is an actual fucking apocalypse on the brink in the AI sector. The entire lynchpin of this thing relies of AI inference being hardware-intensive; it's why NVDA popped, it's why neoclouds popped, it's why SOXL popped. It's why power transformers, nuclear, glassware, copper mining, photonics, and every nook and cranny of the AI rally has happed. The *entire underpinning* of this AI boom is that this magic thinking machine requires a lot of stuff to make it happen. Samsung Littlebit destroyed all of that. It an AI weight quantization technique that decimates - in a literal sense - the RAM requirements for model weights to function, while retaining most of the model's quality. There's other AI compression techniques that LittleBit can be combined with. It's gonna be the thing, technology demands it. Samsung even released the paper and technique for free, under a non-commercial open license. It might shape up to be one of the most pivotal actions in human history; they made native, locally-hostes personal AI accessable to the common man. But it absolutely *fucks* the AI industry. Every company went full-steam to gain an edge on a frontier market, and they all did it with the same thing in mind; local inference was so resource-intensive that it was unfeasible, it required too much RAM to run on a phone or single computer. The cloud model was the only reasonable way to do it, so they went along with what that requires., which is $750 billion dollars worth of capex to build the datacenters to process all this shit and beam it to everybody. Littlebit2 combined with compatible AI optimization tech like TurboQuant (KV cache compressor) allows formidable models to be ran or hardware people can buy. It's a panacea to the RAM shortage; after QAT, it'll shrink memory requirements of shit like Kimi K3 (2.8T parameter) from 1.4TB of HBM RAM to as low as 200GB of *DDR RAM*. 16B models could be shrunk down to run comfortably on most midrange+ phones. It is just too fucking good not to take off. Samsung published the first study results [back in February](https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13771), but it just started making Korean circles last week, it's why their institutionals have been dumping ass. Anybody with the compute and the knowhow can run QAT on open-weight models; Chinese models will probably be rolling out with these by November. OpenAI, Anthropic, and all the other fuckos were so focused on the threat of someone else achieving anything closer to AGI-focused high inference that they didn't consider the threat of optimization towards functional inference; no one needs the AI in their roomba to solve millennium problems, they just need it to do its job, which lower weight focused models are efficient at. US AI companies will copy the formula, but they're married to this datacenter buildout and all of the debt it entails. Dropping damn near a trillion dollars into what's essentially pooling RAM, and then finding out you need way less RAM, isn't an option when the contracts are already signed and the concrete is already poured. Besides server-side AI, there *is no other need* for this much compute, we were talking about doubling the US power grid for this shit. We'll still need a lot of it for training, but everyone's been racking debt under r the premise that inference would take even more. Everyone stuck in that $750B investment will have a depreciated asset. CRWV will go to zero, a lot of their debt is collateralized on their GPU racks and if they depreciate past amortization rate their creditors can call in the debt at-will, so it will be torn literally to pieces. Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely hyped for this tech. It takes the idea of the thinking machine away from the monopolistic grasp of sociopaths like Altman, Zuck, etc and allows almost everybody to have their own personal, private, non-subscription, ad-free, auxiliary brain. But for the love of God cowboy, *hedge your fucking shit*. The shitstorm is coming, randy. The shitbirds are up there, flying around, ready to take a big old shit. Especially on CRWV.

confusedp

HBM is different from ram and nand. Most analysis you hear are for those. I think nand and hardisk supply can catch up in 3-4 years. HBM is not going to. Everyone, including Nvidia would want larger HBM in the GPU. Right now we don't have that. Because HBM supply is the limitations.

sdoiaf

my MU bags are so heavy i can't feel my legs anymore. truly terrible decision but hey, at least the HBM chips were nice while they lasted.

DrMBMDx

why Elon is trying to turning "Karen" ? ..zerohedge @zerohedge Michael Dell expects memory crunch to get worse: WSJ That's fine, Apollo will just raise a pension-fund filled SPV for anyone trying to buy an XPS notebook 12:18 PM · Oct 16, 2026 ......... Elon Musk @elonmusk · 13m For sure in 2027, but if China ramps LP5 & LP6 as fast as they’ve ramped other manufactured products, then 2028 will be a different story. HBM is a tougher hill to climb, however. .....

Ill-Ad1603

Why are optics selling off so aggressively? Upgrading optical networking gear in data centers is one cheap way to get the most out of your existing gpu’s without needing to upgrade expensive GPU’s or HBM’s or server chips.

SlowInterest3000

For NVIDIA, the danger is not necessarily a CoreWeave bankruptcy. It is a broader reduction in the growth rate of AI infrastructure spending, potentially combined with credit losses and weaker market expectations. For neoclouds themselves, the most immediate threat is that debt and infrastructure commitments are fixed or difficult to reduce, while their revenue and financing access are less certain. The single most important question is whether AI customers are generating enough real economic value to sustain the next wave of infrastructure investment. If the answer is yes, financing-stressed providers could consolidate while NVIDIA and memory suppliers continue to grow. If the answer is no, the correction could extend well beyond neoclouds into GPUs, HBM, semiconductor equipment and data-centre financing.

Open_Pollution_8038

I’m not a technical trader but there has been like 4 FUD news cycles in the last 3 years about impending doom from Chinese competitor in AI and none of that shit lasted longer than a few weeks. There is no Chinese incoming competition for MU. Nobody is buying HBM and then sending it to an advanced packager for it to be stapled onto advanced US chips. China doesn’t even have the capability to make advanced HBM anyways.

cryptopolymath

By the time they figure out HBM4, US and Korean manufacturers will be shipping HBM5, DDR6 and next gen 3D DRAM architectures (2029+)

confusedp

If the current price holds, pe will go even lower. HBM supply is not going to catch up to demand for at least 6-8 years, this means they have fully loaded factory churning for that long.

NervouslyRight

I'd be careful about transferring the entire Micron thesis to Sandisk. HBM demand is a big part of the Micron narrative, while NAND pricing and enterprise SSD demand are much more relevant for SNDK. I follow semiconductor price reactions through Moon as well but two companies benefiting from AI infrastructure doesn't mean their earnings drivers are identical.

B1g_C4p1T4l

The phone angle is the demand-side mirror of the same capacity fight. HBM for AI accelerators pays so much more per wafer that the big memory makers keep shifting lines away from commodity DRAM/NAND that phones actually buy. TrendForce/IDC have been writing about that squeeze for months — memory as a share of phone BOM jumping hard, ASPs up, shipment forecasts cut. Worth separating two different bets though: Micron/SK Hynix/Samsung are the ones selling the scarce memory. TSMC (earnings out today: another record quarter, HPC ~68% of revenue vs smartphones ~21%) is the foundry side of AI, not the DRAM shortage itself. Same boom, different bottleneck. The mega long-dated HBM TAM forecasts in the post are useful as direction, but I'd treat the absolute dollar figures as very model-dependent.

kmouratidis

DDR6, HBM5, PCIe 6.0... all three will become available by the time the "tight supply" eases up... in ~2028. Yeah, memory is not going anywhere this decade, even with CXMT ramp up (which we knew was a thing for a while). I would love some cheap DRAM/GDDR/HBM for my homelab, but I just don't see it.

moorhound

Sipping Nikka Days (good, but shoulda got Elijah Craig Toasted Barrel). The backend of this crash is due to the revelation of AI model compression methods turning the whole idea of open weight, low RAM, device-side inference into a reality. The US AI sphere, which was betting on closed model, HBM RAM intensive, datacenter-based cloud streaming inference being the only feasible method, is about to get fucked.

Thisispaartaaa

Thought the chinese memory thing did not apply to HBM….which is the big potatoe with AI….just saying

Abject-Departure8722

Well when a journalist from Barrons can write an article on a Chinese HBM chip maker CXMT having better memory chips can tank the semiconductor and AI stocks makes you wonder if he was short SMH or DRAM. One article and one trillion damage so far…can I sue Barrons? Smh

Slight-Hat5102

I will say this. Micron is nowhere near its peak like some have suggested. The entire tech sector is down right now and it’s not unlikely for even some of the best companies to follow suit. It’s just noise. Supply is still extremely crunched. China is nowhere near HBM4. Micron will be fine.

Sllyce

Is HBM a commodity?

freefall_junkie

Idk honestly we’ll just to wait and see how everything falls but hosting 8bit precision flash models with only \~700w is insanely cheap. The same model hosted on HBM would be something like 2.4Kw (8x rtx 6000 pros) with the caveat that it would also be \~5x faster decode. It’s hard to really do token economics without knowing what the price of these cards are going to be but even in the ballpark of $20k for the 480Gb variant it would be competitive enough to undercut cloud rates and make a generous profit selling low latency, high concurrency inference to regional businesses. Take this all with a grain of salt as I’m just an autist with the pipe dream to operate a small datacenter (1 really nice rack lol) but from where I’m standing these cards enable something like that to be economically viable

virtual_adam

You’re basically explaining it to yourself Right now MU is printing money but the expectations are that in a few years the market can be flooded with HBM It is not an NVDA story where they continue to have secret sauce no one can beat for a decade

Solid-Season9984

Micron and SanDisk are burning billions trying to stack 300+ layers without their drills melting, while HBM packaging yields are literally turning silicon into expensive paperweights. Meanwhile, China's YMTC bypassed US tool bans with Xtacking to hit parity, and CXMT is ramping up low-cost DRAM and domestic packaging to flood the market. Once Beijing's state-subsidized supply taps turn on, pricing power goes to zero and your calls are heading straight behind Wendy's.

financiallythriving

**SK Hynix Delays HBM4 Equipment Orders** A Korean outlet reported that some of SK hynix’s HBM4 back-end equipment orders, planned for the second half of this year, may slip into next year.

timmeh1705

I don't think it's going to be a threat to the mainstream chipmakers like Nvidia (and maybe, just maybe AMD can elevate themselves into the same room). What you need to imagine is the availability of Huawei Ascend chips which China domestic models are going to be trained on (rather than for pure inference) with domestic HBM. Sure they are stuck 2-3 generations behind with far lower yields due to a reliance on DUV, but you'd bet on China doing something creative to get the parts for high NA EUV put together in the next couple of years

Ok-Parfait-9856

I’m abundantly aware about branding modules, bot. And no, CXMT hasn’t surpassed Samsung. You have to be a bot or literally retarded. Can CXMT make HBM4? GDDR7? DDR5-9600MTs? No it can’t. CXMT can make average speed consumer ddr5. That’s a sliver of the current market. They don’t have EUV lithography so they won’t be advancing much further.

snowfightther

No. The AI trend is still valid. The *price* is taking a rest. Neither of those deletes GPU demand, cloud backlog, or hyperscaler capex. It deletes the part of the price that assumed a straight line. I don’t start with “is the boom over.” I run the same five checks I use on every name: 1. Revenue still growing every quarter 2. Operating margin high / losses under control 3. Dilution not eating the slice 4. Management that guides and delivers 5. Backlog or customers that explain the *next* quarter — orders have to become cash. PowerPoint cannot pay interest. Growth has to digest a high print. That is not bearish. That is how the next leg is earned. Price high, not “too high” if the backlog keeps converting. Wait. Let it rest. Semiconductor continues. Korea memory is the more fragile sleeve of the same boom. HBM is not the same as “all DRAM forever.” If CXMT actually ships competitive server parts, Samsung/Hynix multiple compresses even while NVIDIA’s customers are still building. That is rotation inside the trade, not the trade dying. What would make me change my mind: a quarter where hyperscaler capex stops showing up as *billed* cloud/GPU revenue, guidance cuts, or dilution/losses replacing margin.

DavidBergerson

Yes, that is what I said. Their data in their ecosystem is their moat. They can, in essence, lock out other AI systems and force you to use theirs. But to say that a LLM itself is a moat, no. It does not require that much other than power and gpus. In theory, if power were limited, someone could come and take all the power; then there is a moat. That moat is what you are currently seeing with the memory companies. Effectively, only 3 companies make memory; they have limited production, and they chose to push almost everything to HBM, effectively destroying the consumer market. What is the result of that? Musk has said he will build his own fab to make memory for his own companies. This is econ 301 :) Create a high-margin product, and other people will come in and copy it.

Think_Orange_1593

lol, based on Huawei's AI chip roadmap, CXMT is shipping HBM3e next year and hbm4 by 2028. CXMT's 4F is an improvement to current 6F dram cell architecture, beating SK and Samsung by 1 year. 4F require advanced hybrid bonding. Huawei's logic folding Kirin 9050Pro SOC also requires advanced hybrid bonding. This shows Chinese semi tools and fab companies are quite advanced in hybrid bonding and 3D chips, equal to what TSMC, SK and Samsung can do. And hybrid bonding is fundamental to HBM. But I agree CXMT will not materially affect Mu's earnings in the next 3 years because of 1) CXMT new volume will be fully taken by domestic Chinese industries, 2) unlike conventional wisdom Chinese companies will sell at lower prices, CXMT is pricing the same as international players, even higher, they like to make money too, 3) demand of US based companies still far outstrip supply in the next 2-3 years, and 4) US government protectionism. A reasonable guess is China will have production EUV machines by 2031. After that, no one can estimate the supply and margins. But I would argue the memory industry will maintain healthy margins going forward.

Samjabr

I'm tellin ya'll right now, this Chinese company memory story will end up being a mega nothingburger. It's going to take years to hit the level of tech needed to even start to attempt HBM. Never mind that it will take 10+ years to even replicate ASML tech. And that's assuming all the other Co's stand still. We mooning after CPI tomorrow. Get em while they're hot!

Beginning-Fig-9089

Next GEN HBM - Designed by TEMU

Thisispaartaaa

Koreans freaked out about CXMT announcement. In reality, it's a nothingburger....has absolutely nothing to do with HBM...something something memory....anyways, NOTHINGBURGER....BUYING OPPORTUNITY

Ok-Parfait-9856

China makes HBM? GDDR? They can barely make ddr5 and you think they make 10% of the worlds memory?

CaffeinatedT

If we go down the stack through AI Tools > Frontier Lab > Cloud Provider > Data Center > Nvidia > HBM Manufacturers. Someone is getting fucked hard if the majority of the compute demand isn’t revenue producing when subsidies stop. Nvidia and HBM manufacturers have already got their money so they’ll probably be fine.

music_is_gud

Obviously not. I bought MU at 400 and sold at various points between 800-1k. I don't think it will go to 2k any time soon like everyone says. Easy money has already been made. That being said, it may move like a snail moving forward tho. The HBM demand is still very strong

WhereDaStonksBro

Mem stocks aren't equal, everyone including CXMT are trying to pump out HBM for commerical use. Meanwhile I would guess the consumer market has 2 years of pent up demand that could grow to 3 or 4 as things age.

AmazingSugar1

not entirely as there is no true replacement for HBM, yet

beIIe-and-sebastian

This is like HBM3E, whilst the western memory fabs are transitioning to the much faster HBM4, and those have much higher margins too. Also we saw that Apple was denied the ability to use Chinese RAM, I imagine the US will refuse to allow American companies to use Chinese RAM in their data centres.

Wuberg4lyfe

>When China figures out how to manufacture a product, their ability to scale is often greater than the rest of the world combined. We saw this with lithium batteries and solar, for example. >SpaceX is a rare counter-example, where its mass to orbit is roughly an order of magnitude greater than the rest of the world, BUT China now does a majority of non-SpaceX mass to orbit. SpaceX is an anomaly in the matrix. >Maybe RAM will be different, but RAM was a low margin commodity only ~3 years ago. LP5 and LP6 are designed to a common standard that China seems to be solving fast. >Newer HBM architectures and things like an SRAM layer below logic and 3D stacking RAM on top of logic while finding a way to keep the logic cooled will be harder to solve. - Elon Musk SELL

ThirtyFiveK

This is brutal. But SKHY full-port memory is compressed investors are hesitant, and HBM supply is restricted. Even the more common name semis AI chip names with decent multiples get squeezed with this backdrop maybe MU as a yolo even if SKHY is possibly the better or more dominant name for Q4 but damn this call option was insane. I’m not even going to ask what the thought process was because you’re dealing with enough. This was literally worse odds than gambling. Don’t bet the last half of your capital on a put. Close the terminal. For real. Smh.

asria

Wake me up, when they'll consider making own HBM

VexObserver

“AI boom” is doing a lot of work here, the real money printer is Samsung selling the memory and HBM infrastructure everyone suddenly needs to build the AI future. Gold rush rule #1: sometimes the safest fortune is made selling the shovels, not digging for gold.

filwu

The memory-vs-AI-software distinction matters: demand for HBM/DRAM used in AI servers can lift a memory supplier without showing that it captures value from AI models or cloud services. To judge whether the spending is durable, I’d want the article’s breakdown of HBM/DRAM contribution, customer concentration, and capex/depreciation alongside evidence of server utilization. The screenshot here only shows the headline—does the Reuters piece break those drivers out?

rudolf_de_Leeuw

Not the same trade to me: HBM is locked in with multi-year contracts at agreed prices, while NAND is still mostly priced on contract and spot terms, so SNDK benefits from tightness but stays much more exposed to the price cycle. On the Oct 29 report I'd watch NAND pricing guidance and enterprise SSD mix more than anything tied to Micron's HBM story.

Signal_Pace_7968

One way to check how the market sees it: look at what SNDK did on the day after Micron reported. If SNDK moved about as much as MU on that day, traders are treating it as the same trade, whatever the product difference. If it barely moved, the HBM story isn’t being priced into it. Then on Oct 29 you’ll see the other direction. If MU barely reacts to SNDK’s numbers, that tells you the link is mostly one way.

Jean_Jones_666

the "pascal's wager" makes all of those ruminations moot - if we need 100x more memory - it doesn't matter it's a commodity, or that chinese can step in, but yes, if we want to stay closer to the ground - then sure those are risks, having said that you poorly supported this argument: \-HBM is not a commodity at all \-DRAM absorption is going to go off the charts BY HBM, in America and the west \-and yes we ain't gonna start uptting chinese stuff in our datacenters margins will go down after we have expanded capacity. That's slower than you'd think, even for this "commodity", and even then - at first the entire extra capacity will get absorbed too, if we'll truly need as much memory as EVERYONE IS SAYING (and have been right for a while now, as models continue going off the charts with capabilities)

Known_Grocery4434

The at home robots will use more HBM than exists in the universe today. Safe multi year bet. 

segfaulting

Your bet is more a bet against chinese memory gaining market share than it is against memory demand waning. I would not bet against china, we have seen them make every single industry cheaper and I don't see why DRAM/HBM will be different a couple more years down the line.

Rabitai_Trades

I would not treat them as the same trade. Micron CEO said memory and storage look tighter in 2027 and 2028 than this year, and more than 75 percent of Micron 2027 output is already committed. Sandisk is NAND, not HBM, so you only get the broader shortage story, not the HBM backlog people keep quoting for Micron. Fine if the bull case is just that NAND stays tight through 2028. That is a different bet than riding HBM contracts.

scramjetmode

# Micron has demonstrated sustainably to investors that when after market manipulations like yesterday’s its price sustains a key level such as, in our case now, 1,000,, it bounces back up a few days later very violently. Stay patient to collect indecent amount of gains. No other stock with these fundamentals and such little cyclicality (in HBM).🤌

Rocket233Man

Earnings are great. Memory pricing is still ripping, HBM is eating capacity, sell-side is bullish. All true.

MikeCheck_CE

They are, that's why the stock went up in the first place.... HDD is the cheapest "storage"... But it's not "memory" like DRAM/HBM

MikeCheck_CE

Because WDC is doing nothing special and competition is already increasing on HDDs. The technology is old, there is no moat like HBM manufacturers.

iceollie

The HBM pricing point actually looks pretty important here. Recent forecasts are for another very large jump in HBM pricing next year. But that cuts both ways for Samsung: great for the memory business, while the same rising memory costs squeeze phones and other devices. So the question isn’t really whether AI demand is strong anymore, it’s how much of that pricing power actually drops through to group margins once the other divisions absorb the higher costs.

Mother_Soup1391

Honestly think SK Hynix will see a modest bump—maybe 3‑4x lift—because they have less HBM focus and more capacity. Their margins won’t explode like Samsung’s now, so the gap between them could actually widen instead of close.

Appropriate_Top_5274

Goldman Sachs expects Samsung’s HBM revenue to explode from roughly $20 billion in 2026 to $74 billion in 2027 and that is 274% growth in a single year, with HBM rising from only 8% to 19% of Samsung’s total DRAM revenue.

JustBrowsinAndVibin

New note came out today that HBM prices are expected to double again next year. Demand is severely outpacing their ability to scale up supply.

scramjetmode

# What’s there cyclical about HBM? Until 2030 nothing at all. Micron will go up. Much higher.

scramjetmode

# Latest recommendation on Micron: BUY - USD 3,000 per ordinary share expected in 12 months. Major incidental factor is buyback and a new expected rerating when the marker realises there is no cyclicality around HBM. 🐺

Midget_Molester10

which is absurd because apparently to Wall street hedgies hard drives are the same thing as NAND and HBM / DRAM LOL

mayorolivia

Man you are regarded. The supply of GPU/CPU/HBM chips is limited. You can see this in all the earnings and forecasts of the fab and equipment producers. Lisa saying this means they will get ADDITIONAL allocation from namely TSMC, as well as the memory providers (she also mentions Foxconn). The way it works is AMD gets a ton of demand from customers. AMD comes to TSMC, memory companies, and says “we want more allocation.” Those guys then look at all their customers and decide how to split up their allocations based on how much money the designers are willing to pony up, plus other factors such as how much money they think they’ll spend in the future, etc. This link is old but demonstrates the point I’m making: https://www.trendforce.com/research/download/RP250107CZ TLDR: Increased capacity doesn’t mean that supply of chips and memory is increasing significantly. It means AMD has negotiated to get more allocation because they’re getting more orders from customers.

fartificial_degen

baggie said what? so you are telling me, Citadel unwinding the cheap shares they acquired, Goldman increasing their put to common shares ratio by 58 in the last quarter, 70% of the workforce being ready to go on strike, CFO saying they gave a nice meaty bonus but it turning out to be rejected by the workers for a permanent 15% cut like SKHynix and Samsung had to do for their employees has nothing to do with it? what about all the cost of construction where they won't see any production benefits for the next year or more in the US? huh...did you know Intel will be working with SKHnix on HBM production in the US? gee, wonder if the government has any stake in Intel. I got no stake here, I entered at 180 last year, sold all of it at the top \~1200, just enjoying the mega IQ bagholders try to convince each other to hold lol. stop shilling your bullshit positions on others. if you believe in your thesis, you'd just stfu, but you are here to just pass the bag on other regards.

Confident-Mistake400

AMD customers can’t switch to competitors easily when Micron customers can. There is no moat nothing for Micron. If one day Samsung decides to sell HBM for less, Micron has no choice but cut the price to stay competitive.

ritzk9

Umm...who invented HBM?

mayorolivia

And Micron doesn’t have patents? People don’t understand how hard it is to make HBM.

Upstairs_Whole_580

EVERY other time I've bought calls, or leaps(only ever leaps) I've held for less than 1 month. NVDA, MSFT were at 163 and 350 earlier this year. I bought 200 and 202 contracts at 215 and 500. In one month(almost exactly) it was at 210 and 480 and I sold. Just... took the winner. Same with shorts on WLMT and COST in Feb of '24. 3 weeks, sold. A couple other examples, but I don't do this much. But SKHY should hit 300 by the time those first set expire and I think it could go earlier. It's bigger than Micron, their price caps are off. They're selling almost 3X as much HBM4 to NVDA for Rubin and the COST is about 2.7X as much... and they are responsible for about 55-60% of the HBM4 share. PLUS, 2027 and 2028 being the largest memory shortages in history, unlike MU, THEY can still raise their price for peak pricing. I also think it's going to become less cyclical and it deserves a forward PE of at least 10-12. If it traded at JUST 12X Forward, it's 484. So I don't need some heroic move to get there. Also, I'm not using any leverage.

scramjetmode

# After the market is done shaking out Micron, the setup for a generational rerating is sitting in plain sight. The fundamentals are extraordinary: structurally tighter supply, unprecedented earnings power, record margins, and an HBM business that looks far less cyclical than legacy memory. If the market is willing to pay obscene forward multiples for Advanced Money Destroyer, at some point it will have to recognize what Micron is delivering: a level of profitability and margin expansion the company and the market has never seen before. 🐺

TreGet234

China can easily make memory chips if they can up production. Only HBM has a moat...

kexportstars

He dodged it because nobody in memory can realistically guide three years out without getting burned by the cycle. What makes this cycle structurally different for now is the wafer cannibalization from HBM. Producing one bit of HBM3e/HBM4 eats roughly three times the wafer capacity of standard DDR5. As long as hyperscalers lock up SK Hynix and Micron cleanroom capacity for AI stacks, legacy DRAM supply stays artificially constrained, which props up conventional ASPs. But once Samsung resolves its HBM qualification bottlenecks and both Korean giants ramp up next-gen lines like Pyeongtaek P4 and Cheongju M15X, supply elasticity will test pricing discipline quickly. Visibility into 2026 is plausible; pretending to see into 2028 is pure fiction.

cdttedgreqdh

I think most people lack understanding about why they decreasing RAM/HBM per server is actually not a threat. They don‘t decrease it because they want to save costs, they do so because there is simply not enough availableY more memory is insanely valuable for how AI compute works. They would use more if they could.

Every_Way_1011

yeah you get the supply‑tight spot, but another angle is the power/thermal envelope. HBM‑filled GPUs can hit 400+W just for memory, which a rack can’t handle. So data‑center builders will cut memory per unit to stay within power budgets, even if prices are high. The result is earlier strain on the price/volume trade‑off you noted.

Effective_Mistake712

the thing most people overlook is that the 26% price‑protected slice comes from contracts that only lock price when the customer hits a certain volume threshold – it’s not a blanket wholesale lock. as soon as they dip below that or hit a cash‑claim clause, the rest floats to market. that’s what the CEO was hinting at when he said customers cut memory per unit – demand’s shifting to cheaper stores or higher‑density GPUs, so price can still sputter even if supply stays tight. the upside for Micron is that the HBM repricing in early 2024 is already nudging gross margin toward 88%, but the next 12‑18 months will really test whether that holds. keep an eye on the December 16 filing for the next DRAM price move.

Important-Win-5370

The memory crunch is real, every data center build is fighting for same HBM allocation and it creates weird bottlenecks nobody planned for. If NVIDIA is already compromising on spec before the chip even ships, that tells you demand is still far ahead of supply, which is bullish for the whole stack but painful if you picked the wrong layer. I think the photonics angle is where the smarter money rotates, because it solves a structural problem instead of just riding scarcity. Short term it will be choppy, but the trade is getting more surgical and less "buy anything with AI in the name."

Level10Retard

Less memory per server doesn't mean much from my understanding. It fully depends on the supply capabilities of HBM memory vs GPU compute chips. Nvidia was planning 288GB per GPU, but the memory supply is so constrained that if they did 288, they would be constraining themselves by the memory supply issues rather than by their own chip supply. So the result is less memory per GPU (thus server as well) but more GPUs (thus more servers). This is just industry being efficient. Anything else would be weird. My only conclusion is that more fiber will be needed to connect more servers.

LongAppointment5976

The last post of wall st engine is real? That will be bullish for memory stocks this week? **JPMorgan sees memory supply remaining tight through 2028, with customer order discussions already extending into 2031. Its estimates point to: • HBM bit demand growth: +63% • Non-HBM server DRAM: +37% • CY27 HBM blended ASP: +54% YoY JPM also believes Micron’s >35% revenue coverage under long-term supply agreements through 2030 could prove conservative, noting Asian memory peers have LTAs covering 50%+ of capacity.

FollowingGlobal7369

You really think ppl are gonna read about HBM and DRAM and why memory is cyclical? 😭 I bet most memory bols don’t even know it’s DRAM that’s carrying them due to supposedly “unlimited” HBM demand. But… DRAM is not that hard of a game

SpiderWil

I woudln't b surprised the chinese are actively stealing wdc stx toshiba technology to make HDD right now, just like what they are doing to HBM DRAM NAND

Cav829

It's kind of caught up in the big memory plunge since it's in a bunch of ETFs with other memory plays. It's the most resilient of all of them though thanks to HBM.

music_is_gud

Yea, but Asians can outbuild US companies far quicker. Also HBM4/5's patent moat is much more than HDD's

music_is_gud

HDD box doesn't have as much of a moat as HBM though. It's a real risk

Panthera__Tigris

Only 3 companies on the planet can make HBM. It will take many many years for anyone else to catch up, especially with export controls.

Double-Minimum-9048

SKHY makes HBM memory which is 40,000 times faster than the hard drives WDC/STX make, thats why there unaffected by the toshiba news.

Unlikely-Tax1480

my understanding is NAND is better. Less storage, but still a lot compared to DRAM/HBM, and reasonably quick

Administrative-Ant75

Oh my god was literally thinking about AXTI just a few hours ago, insane timing. I really don't know enough about the engineering wise stuff here (wish IA had article here lol), but I can't see them paying off current valuation. Would've liked to see some insane price hikes already tbh... If optics / AI becomes waaaay more important in the future, China has a great negotiating lever like we used with ASML exports to just shut of GaN and InP exports out of china. Don't see why they don't use it tbh, at least to get HBM supply

ManonFire1224

HDD does absolutely nothing for HBM and very very little for NAND.

SouthernIsland1884

it really boils down to the difference between commodity‑memory DRAM/NAND and the high‑bandwidth memory that’s driving AI GPUs. microns and sandisk rely on the spot market, so they’re still subject to the classic boom‑and‑bust cycle once fab output starts catching up, even if that cycle is stretched out by long‑term contracts. on the other hand nvda’s value comes from its ecosystem lock‑in and the fact that every new iso‑grade GPU needs its own custom HBM, so the demand curve is much less elastic. a 70/30 split tilts heavily toward the opportunistic, cyc‑bound side—if your conviction is that AI demand keeps rising, you might want a larger tilt toward nvda or tsmc while still keeping a safety net in microns for the inevitable supply‑tight squeeze.

scramjetmode

PANICAN! Yes, you. HBM eats wafer capacity, AI GPUs keep needing more memory, and only a few suppliers can scale it. This isn’t your grandpa’s DRAM cycle. See you at 2,000. Place your bets responsibly. https://preview.redd.it/pf7dhx7tzvsh1.jpeg?width=1254&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=19237c4d7be8e3c0c9cb1a9f9a1e075988a3ef43

option-trader

Not sure if you've been following, but capacity is maxed this year. So, it's all pricing power. Competition in HBM is an oligopoly between MU, SKHY, and Samsung. So, there's no comp. in their high margins.

Fauster

I think it's groundhog day for MU, again, and the trailing PE compression will again be extreme. But, now there's a min EPS figure in place, which is a lot less than expectations, that's just the cash in escrow. Importantly, it was spelled out on the call that HBM would be more convex going forward and that was where the focus was shifting. Both SKHY and MU made the same moves towards HBM, indicating that DRAM and NAND were smaller bottlenecks. In this opaque world, actions speak louder than words, but the words were pretty darn clear in this call. The market is pricing a go down to the Winchestor, have a warm pint, wait for agents and caches that live in memory to blow over scenario, but a new price levels where SCA commitments put an in-place bottom-line on revenues that helps keep debt off the books of NVDA et. al, but is real cash sitting in escrow. tl;dr: long MU SKHY, probable boring future buyback aristocrats, like the MAG6 used to be.