By Heekyong Yang <\/p>\n
SEOUL, June 25 (Reuters) – South Korean semiconductor shares rallied on Thursday after U.S. memory chipmaker Micron Technology’s quarterly results and forecast beat expectations, boosting \u200coptimism over sustained demand for AI-related chips. <\/p>\n
Shares of SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics rose \u200cas much as 11.6% and 6.2%, respectively, in early trade, tracking a rally in U.S. chip stocks after Micron’s \u200bearnings and outlook reinforced confidence in the memory sector. <\/p>\n
The rally also followed SK Hynix’s announcement on Wednesday of plans to raise up to 45.45 trillion won ($29.52 billion) through a secondary listing on Nasdaq, as it seeks to capitalise on strong investor appetite for AI stocks. <\/p>\n
The benchmark KOSPI, in \u200cwhich Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix \u2060together account for more than 55% of market capitalisation, was trading up 5.2% as of 0139 GMT. <\/p>\n
Micron, a key supplier for Nvidia’s AI processors \u2060alongside South Korean chip makers, forecast quarterly profit and revenue well above expectations on Wednesday and said its customers had committed $22 billion to lock in supplies of memory chips, sending its shares surging \u200b12% in \u200bafter-hours trading. <\/p>\n
The upbeat outlook reinforced expectations that AI-driven \u200bdemand for memory chips will remain \u200crobust despite concerns over heavy spending on AI infrastructure. <\/p>\n
JPMorgan continues to recommend investors “add on any dips” and maintain maximum exposure to South Korean equities, describing South Korea in a note as its preferred market in the region, while raising a 12-month KOSPI target to 12,500 points. The KOSPI was trading at 8,913.27 in morning trade. <\/p>\n
Micron’s upbeat outlook lifted shares of U.S.-listed chipmakers late \u200con Wednesday, with more than $400 billion added in market \u200bvalue after the strong forecasts from Micron and Qualcomm \u200bbreathed fresh life into Wall Street’s \u200brecently waning AI stock rally. <\/p>\n
“Memory shortages were triggered by the explosive need \u200cfor AI factory infrastructure…and we believe the \u200brole of memory as \u200ba strategic asset in Artificial General Intelligence remains unchanged,” JPMorgan analysts said in a separate note, adding they saw little sign of demand destruction or memory-content optimisation that would \u200bease the supply-demand imbalance. <\/p>\n
Micron’s forecast – \u200cand third-quarter results that beat Wall Street estimates – underscore how AI-driven shortages are \u200bforcing its large-scale data center customers to fund capacity, reshaping the memory market. ($1 = \u200b1,539.6600 won) <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Heekyong YangEditing by Ed Davies) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Heekyong Yang SEOUL, June 25 (Reuters) – South Korean semiconductor shares rallied on Thursday after U.S. memory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,171479,85,46,44860,28431,28429,349,71979,11471,125607,125,234034],"class_list":["post-509791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-demand-destruction","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-kospi","tag-memory-chips","tag-micron-technology","tag-samsung-electronics","tag-sk-hynix","tag-south-korea","tag-south-korean","tag-technology","tag-upbeat-outlook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}