SEAJ has significantly raised its sales forecast for Japanese-made semiconductor equipment in fiscal year 2026, expecting it to break records.
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UBS has again raised its price forecast for memory chips, saying the DRAM shortage is expected to continue until 2028.
According to Mars Finance, on July 3rd, UBS stated that based on industry research, it has raised its benchmark forecast for DDR contract prices to a 32% quarter-on-quarter increase in Q3 2026 and an 18% quarter-on-quarter increase in Q4 2026, up from previous forecasts of 17% and 12% respectively. UBS continues to expect the DRAM industry to remain in a supply shortage until at least 2028. By 2027, the gap between DRAM demand growth and supply growth is projected to widen to 17%. Assuming no downstream inventory digestion in 2027, meaning that customers still have sufficient inventory after restocking in the second half of 2026, the supply deficit ratio will worsen from 8.1% in 2026 to 13.6% in 2027. UBS stated that both of these levels are unseen in the past 30 years. Regarding NAND flash memory, UBS currently forecasts a 30% quarter-over-quarter price increase in Q3 2026 and a 12% quarter-over-quarter increase in Q4, and expects the NAND uptrend to continue until at least Q4 2027. UBS has also raised its revenue forecast for the memory industry to $992 billion in 2026 and $1.763 trillion in 2027. The main risk lies in the affordability of hyperscale cloud service providers, especially as they still need to access capital markets to finance capital expenditures.
Goldman Sachs raised its target price for Kioxia, citing AI storage demand as driving the NAND cycle to even greater heights.
According to BlockBeats, on July 1st, amidst the continued surge in storage demand driven by AI data center construction, Goldman Sachs raised its 12-month target price for Japanese NAND flash memory manufacturer Kioxia Holdings to ¥116,000 and maintained its buy rating. The bank believes that the supply and demand tension in the NAND market is tighter than previously expected, and the price increase cycle may continue until mid-2027, and even into 2028 in some segments. In its report on June 30th, Goldman Sachs stated that it had raised its operating profit forecasts for Kioxia for FY3/27 to FY3/29 by 9%, 19%, and 29%, respectively, and its EPS forecasts were also raised by 10%, 19%, and 29%, respectively. The bank expects that, on a calendar year basis, the average selling price of NAND will rise sharply in 2026 and continue to grow by 38% in 2027, higher than its previous forecast of 27%. The report states that research in Japanese distribution channels indicates major memory manufacturers are still prioritizing capital expenditures on DRAM rather than significantly increasing NAND production capacity. Given the expanding demand for AI, the increase in new NAND supply may not be significant until 2028. This has brought Kioxia back into the spotlight for investors. In the past few cycles, the NAND market has been considered a more cyclical and easily oversupplied memory sector due to its larger number of participants compared to the DRAM and HDD industries. However, Goldman Sachs believes that the profit peak of this upward cycle may be higher than previously assumed and could be sustained for longer. The reasons behind this include rising demand for enterprise-grade SSDs, substitution demand due to tight HDD supply, and the potential impact of US export controls on equipment supply to some South Korean manufacturers' factories in China. Kioxia's management has recently signaled a greater emphasis on price and profit margins. Goldman Sachs states that the company is not in a hurry to lock in shipments through long-term agreements, but rather emphasizes price discipline and gross margin levels. Because price negotiations for some Q1 bit shipments were not yet finalized when the company issued its guidance, Goldman Sachs expects Kioxia's FY3/27 operating profit, to be announced on July 31, to reach ¥1.417 trillion, higher than the company's guidance of ¥1.298 trillion and Bloomberg's consensus estimate of ¥1.36 trillion. Goldman Sachs focuses on two key investment rationale. First, Kioxia is the world's third-largest NAND flash memory manufacturer, possessing relatively strong cost competitiveness. Second, the company is gradually developing products for data centers, which are expected to be the fastest-growing segment of the NAND market. With increasing demand for high-performance storage from AI servers and enterprise-grade SSDs, Kioxia has the opportunity to achieve higher profit margins during periods of rising prices. However, Goldman Sachs also cautions that the cyclical nature of the NAND industry has not disappeared. Risks include a slowdown in AI investment, the rise of Chinese NAND manufacturers, declining profit margins due to rising costs or fluctuations in capacity utilization, a significant appreciation of the yen, and the impact of non-AI applications.
"White-haired stock market guru" Serenity: Semiconductor supply chain bottlenecks are worsening, and packaging and testing manufacturers are raising prices.
According to Odaily Odaily, Serenity, a well-known stock market guru, summarized recent semiconductor industry developments on the X platform, stating that multiple signs indicate a tightening semiconductor supply chain. Citing institutional and industry sources, he pointed out that Morgan Stanley has revised its 2026 shipment forecast for Chinese humanoid robots from 14,000 and 28,000 units at the beginning of the year to 50,000 units; probe cards and test sockets are expected to see price increases due to rising precious metal prices and a shortage of test pin capacity; and Yageo has raised prices for products such as MLCCs, aluminum electrolytic capacitors, tantalum capacitors, polymer aluminum capacitors, film capacitors, and supercapacitors. In addition, Serenity stated that Meta's next-generation Vistara architecture will use DDR4 memory combined with CXL expansion; OpenAI has reportedly made a breakthrough in inference optimization, halving inference costs and reducing GPU requirements; and after Samsung signed long-term supply agreements (LTAs) with major US technology customers, MLCCs have also begun to adopt the long-term agreement supply model. The report also cited Digitimes, stating that OSAT (Outsourced Semiconductor Testing and Assembly) vendors have begun raising prices, and that memory and IC packaging and testing capacity has become a major bottleneck in the semiconductor supply chain.
Bernstein significantly raised its target price for SNDK to $3,000.
According to BlockBeats, on June 30th, Bernstein analyst Mark Newman raised the firm's price target for SNDK from $1700 to $3000 and maintained its "Outperform" rating on the stock. The firm noted that the new Long-Term Memory Agreements (LTAs) differ from older agreements because older LTAs were customer-centric, while the new LTAs have fixed or range-bound pricing, include upfront payment commitments to lock in customers and protect against downside risk, and have longer terms. Based on data provided by the firm, it estimates the floor price of SanDisk's recently signed LTAs at 29 cents per GB, significantly lower than Micron's floor price in the second quarter, the analyst told investors in a research note.
Bank of America raised its capital expenditure forecasts for Alphabet, Meta, and AWS.
According to BlockBeats, on July 8th, Bank of America revised its capital expenditure forecasts for Alphabet, Meta, and AWS upwards for 2026 and 2027. Alphabet's 2026 capital expenditure forecast was revised upwards from $187 billion to $195 billion, and its 2027 forecast from $257 billion to $290 billion. Meta's 2026 forecast was revised upwards from $130 billion to $145 billion, and its 2027 forecast from $157 billion to $185 billion. AWS's 2026 forecast remained at $159 billion, while its 2027 forecast was revised upwards from $196 billion to $230 billion.
Omdia: China's semiconductor market will exceed $800 billion by 2026, with the memory chip market surging by 262.9%.
According to Omdia's latest report, "Semiconductor Applications Forecast Tool (AMFT) - China, Q2 2026," the Chinese semiconductor market is projected to grow at a significantly higher year-on-year rate of 92.9%, reaching $812.08 billion. This represents an overall upward revision of $265.6 billion, or 48.6%, compared to the previous report, "AMFT Shipments: China - Q4 2025 Update" (which projected a 31.26% growth rate for the Chinese semiconductor market, reaching $546.5 billion). Omdia's latest Q2 2026 data also shows that the Chinese semiconductor memory market is projected to grow at a significantly higher rate of 262.9%, reaching $449.6 billion. (Cailian Press)