Analyst Emily Scarlet stated that, based on Micron Technology's financial report and disclosures from various manufacturers, the current severe shortage of memory chips cannot be denied, thus driving up prices. The reason for the shortage is quite clear: AI data centers have snapped up all available capacity. Manufacturing 1GB of HBM (high-end memory used in AI chips) requires approximately three times the wafer capacity of ordinary memory. The three major manufacturers (Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron) have all shifted their production lines to the more profitable HBM, naturally leading to a shortage of ordinary memory. Because of this shortage logic, Micron's stock price has risen by approximately 242% this year, and SK Hynix's has risen by approximately 770% in the past 12 months. New chip storage capacity is not expected to be available until the first half of 2027 at the earliest.
Therefore, the conclusion on the supply side is relatively clear: the memory price increase cycle from 2026 to the first half of 2027 has strong physical protection.
If one were to ask when to start selling storage sector stocks, the likely timeline would be mid-2027 to 2028. With Micron Idaho and South Korea's Yongin Semiconductor clusters achieving mass production by the end of 2027, supply will gradually normalize and will no longer be as extremely scarce as it is now. At the same time, with the slowdown in AI demand, it is very likely that there will be a supply surplus in 2028-2029.
