Asia Semiconductor Market: Strong Memory Momentum Powered By ASP Rise

JPMorgan

Overall semiconductor sales grew 28% year-over-year in September (+22% in August), the strongest growth in the past year. This was driven by data center and AI-related spending (state-of-the-art logic, HBM) and higher average unit price (ASP) for general memory products.

🚀 Memory: Price surge drives growth

Revenue: surged 44% year-over-year (+18% in August).

ASP (price): saw a strong rally, surging 22% year-on-year (+3% in August).

Factors that drive up prices:

Shortage of HBM supply due to robust demand from NVIDIA and ASIC.

As major suppliers switch their production facilities to HBMs, general DRAM supply becomes tight and spot prices soar (especially due to the announcement of discontinuation such as DDR4).

CSPs (cloud companies) resume stockpiling of eSSD and increase in short-term NAND prices due to lack of HDD.

Shipments (Units): Up 19%, driven by strong demand from HBM shipments, server DRAM procurement, and eSSD.

🤖 Logic: AI Strong, Non-AI Slumped

Revenue: Up 21% Y/Y. AI semiconductor growth was strong, but non-AI demand remained sluggish.

ASP (Price): Up 12% on the back of robust prices for advanced nodes. However, price pressures for 12-inch maturation nodes persist.

Shipments (Units): Only 8% higher. This is attributed to inventory exhaustion on pre-order volumes before tariffs and the transition to AI server production.

💡 2026 Outlook and Investment Strategy

Outlook: J.P. Morgan remains optimistic about ‘AI supercycle’ and expects AI-related upcycle to continue through 2026 (capex of top four CSPs expected to increase by about 40% in 2026). It believes there are no signs of semiconductor bubble.

Price: Overall pricing uptick is expected, which will benefit memory, state-of-the-art foundry, and OSAT players.

Slump Expectations: On the other hand, Tier-2 Foundries with high consumer electronics exposure could face margin pressure. The recovery in automotive and industrial semiconductors is likely to be slow due to macroeconomic uncertainty.

선호주 (Preferred Picks): TSMC, SK 하이닉스, ASE, Advantest, Tokyo Electron, AMEC 등.

신중한 종목 (Cautious): Novatek, SMIC, VIS, UMC, GlobalWafers

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