Storage products have picked up and have been concerned by the market again. According to reports, the recent price of storage products "has increased by more than 50% compared with before, and some products have even more than doubled". Affected by this, some memory chip concept stocks have also started a strong trend, such as BIWIN Storage (688525SH) from February 8th to 27th, the amplitude of ** exceeded 60%. Infront Micro (000670.)SZ), Ziguang Guowei (002049SZ) and other stocks are also strong stocks in the near future, and the stock price limit on February 29.
The industry believes that this wave of storage products not only reflects the changes in the market supply and demand, but also may indicate the beginning of a new round of growth cycle in the storage industry.
Storage products have become the focus of attention
In the second half of 2022, the global demand for consumer electronics such as smartphones and computers plummeted, and the storage market was overcapacity, with supply far exceeding demand. DRAM (memory chips) and Nand-Flash (flash memory chips) have been cut in half, and they will fall to the bottom in mid-2023.
Due to the lack of demand for storage products and the decline in the world, upstream chip manufacturers have fallen into a crisis. At that time, Samsung Electronics' profits**, and SK hynix also recorded the largest loss in history. At the same time, the inventory of major storage manufacturers such as Micron Technology and Western Digital continues to rise, making downstream memory chips even more sluggish.
According to statistics, Samsung, SK hynix and Micron Technology are the world's three largest memory chip manufacturers, and together they account for more than 95% of the world's DRAM and NAND-FLASH orders. Such large factories are facing difficulties, and you can imagine the difficulty of the entire industry at that time. According to the judgment of the industry, under the "cold winter" of storage, the collective operating loss of the leading memory chip manufacturers in 2023 is estimated to reach a record-breaking $5 billion, the most serious loss in the past 15 years.
In order to alleviate inventory pressure and support products**, international memory chip manufacturers such as Micron Technology, SK hynix, and Samsung have successively adopted strategies to reduce expenses and production to adjust supply.
After a long period of adjustment, the effects of the above strategies have gradually become apparent. The contraction of the supply side has gradually stabilized the demand side of storage products. In the past year, the market has undergone a major adjustment, and the "price increase of solid-state drives and memory modules" has once again become the focus of attention. Comparing the main products of Kingston, Kioxia, Western Digital, YMTC and other brands in the past year, we can find that during the May-June period of 2023, the products of many leading storage manufacturers have hit a trough, but they are now more than 50% higher than the previous ones, and some products have even more than doubled.
Many factors have prompted the recovery of the memory chip industry
With the recovery of products, some institutions believe that the storage industry has ushered in an inflection point. According to TrendForce research, the contract price of DRAM products began in Q4 2021** and began in Q4 2023** after eight consecutive quarters. Similarly, the contract price for Nand-Flash began in Q3 2022** and after four consecutive quarters**, it also started in Q3 2023**. According to Everbright, DRAM and NAND-FLASH are expected to increase in price for four consecutive quarters in 2024 according to the current trend.
This trend is closely related to the growth of demand. According to Gartner, the global semiconductor market size is expected to grow by 16% year-on-year in 20248% to $624 billion. Among them, memory chips are expected to grow by 663%, which is one of the major factors driving the growth of the market.
In addition to the contraction of the supply side and the increase of the demand side, the explosion of AI technology is also an important factor in promoting the development of memory chips. According to the research report of Huachuang**, the strong drive of AI demand will usher in a situation where the storage market will usher in a situation of both volume and price.
In the field of PCs and mobile phones, the empowerment of AI is accelerating the upgrade of terminal configurations, which is expected to continue to increase the demand for bits. In terms of servers, according to Micron's calculations, the amount of DRAM NAND in AI servers is 8 times and 3 times that of traditional servers. HBM has broken through the bottleneck of memory capacity and bandwidth, and is regarded as a next-generation DRAM solution and an indispensable key technology in the AI era.
Some companies are on the radar of institutional investors
From this point of view, the recovery of products, the growth of the global semiconductor market and the explosion of AI demand have provided strong support for the development of the storage industry. In this context, relevant listed companies are also concerned by institutions.
According to the announcement, Longsys (301308SZ) was surveyed by 50 institutions from February 1 to 5. It is reported that the company has formed four product lines: embedded storage, solid-state drives (SSDs), mobile storage and memory modules. In an institutional research announcement disclosed on Feb. 5, the company said that it has launched a sample of MLC NAND-FLASH and is in the process of testing.
Guoxin Technology Co., Ltd. (688262.)SH) is one of the leading enterprises in the industrial application of domestic embedded CPUs, and said in an institutional survey on February 6 that the wholly-owned subsidiary Guangzhou Lingxin launched the domestic RAID card solution CCUSR8116 for server application scenarios, which can provide customers with reliable large-capacity storage array management. In addition, the company recently said on the interactive platform that the newly launched series of automotive electronic chips and server high-reliability storage management control chips (RAID chips) in 2023 have entered the test development and application stage of many customers, and some products have also received customer orders, and the company's profitability is expected to improve in the future.
In addition to the above companies, Yachuang Electronics (301099SZ) also said on the interactive platform that the company's wholly-owned subsidiary, WE, will focus on SK hynix's memory, and HBM will be the key direction of the future layout. Huahai Chengke (688535.)SH) can be used for HBM encapsulation, and the related products have been verified by customers and are now in the sample delivery stage.