00:00Memory chip prices have surged, driving a vast divide between winners and losers in the stock
00:05market, and investors don't see any end in sight. From Nintendo to Apple, suppliers are seeing their
00:10shares slump on concerns about profits, but memory chip producers are soaring to unprecedented
00:16heights. To put that in perspective, a Bloomberg gauge of consumer electronics makers is down 10%
00:21since the end of September. Meanwhile, a group of memory makers, including Samsung, has surged
00:26roughly 160%. The question now is how much is priced in. Analysts are now assessing which firms
00:32can best weather this squeeze by locking in their chip supplies, raising their prices, or redesigning
00:37to use less memory. Memory chip shortages and prices are being mentioned frequently in earnings calls
00:42and company reports, and investors are hearing the alarm bells. All of this is coming, of course,
00:47at the time of unprecedented AI spending, which is compounding concerns about chip shortages.
00:52The massive build-out of AI infrastructure by companies like Amazon has also shifted the focus
00:57for manufacturing capacity towards high bandwidth memory, and away from that used in traditional
01:03consumer electronics. This has led to what some are calling a super cycle, breaking the usual
01:08boom-to-bust patterns of memory supply and demand.
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