The memory chip sector has recently ignited an investment frenzy, with sustained substantial gains across A-shares, Hong Kong, and US markets, where several individual stocks have delivered standout performances. Among them, A-share Infotmic Co.,Ltd. (000670.SZ) achieved four consecutive trading limit-ups, while US-listed Micron Technology (MU.US) surged over 15% across four sessions, and Hong Kong's GIGADEVICE (03986) soared more than 80% within eight trading days post-listing. Behind this broad-based rally, a super bull cycle for the memory chip industry appears to be brewing. It is understood that in Q4 2025, leading manufacturers like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix announced price increases for their memory chips, with average hikes reaching 30%, a trend that continued into 2026. According to the latest price trends published on TrendForce's official website, prices for various types of memory DRAM and flash memory NAND Flash have generally seen double-digit increases since the end of last year. Furthermore, a monthly price tracker report from Counterpoint Research indicates that memory chip prices are projected to rise another 40%-50% in Q1 2026, followed by an estimated ~20% increase in Q2.
The rising prices of memory chips have propelled continued strong rallies in sector stocks. In January this year alone, the A-share memory chip segment climbed over 25%, US memory-related concepts surged nearly 40%, and Hong Kong memory concept stocks also advanced more than 20%. Investment banks are optimistic about the market outlook; for instance, Morgan Stanley noted in a recent research report that the supply-demand gap for traditional memory chips is persistently widening, forecasting a new wave of super-cycle from Q2 2025 through 2026. So, what is the underlying logic behind the sustained surge in memory chips, and which concept stocks are available across the A-share, Hong Kong, and US markets? High-performing and potential stocks may present investment opportunities.
Driven by both supply and demand dynamics, the memory industry is entering a major cycle. Reviewing the development cycles of the memory industry, according to a research report from AJ Securities, there have been three major cycles since 2016, each spanning approximately four years. Every cycle progresses from accelerated growth to slowing growth rates, then to a downturn, accompanied by initial price surge phases, while the overall market size shows a spiral upward trend. The third cycle commenced in 2024, primarily driven by demand for AI agents amid the AI development wave. In 2024, rapid iteration of large AI models accelerated the deployment of end products like AI phones, AI servers, and AI PCs, significantly boosting consumer purchase demand. Downstream demand for the two core memory chips, DRAM and NAND Flash, is mainly constituted by servers, smartphones, and personal computers (PCs), which collectively account for approximately 80% and 75% of demand, respectively. The emergence of DeepSeek in 2025 drastically reduced AI application costs, ushering in the era of AI agents. Cloud providers increased capital expenditures to deploy AI servers and computing centers, stimulating sustained demand growth across multiple scenarios and driving a simultaneous increase in both volume and price for memory chips.
In essence, the memory chip industry's entry into a new cycle is influenced by scarcity on the supply side and the unleashing of AI-driven demand, with market size growth expected to extend until 2027, potentially creating a market feast for the industry chain. From the supply perspective, DRAM and NAND Flash are the two dominant memory chips. DRAM, a volatile memory that interacts directly with computing chips like CPUs and GPUs to swiftly store temporary information generated from billions of calculations per second, has become a hard currency in the AI agent era. DRAM technology has evolved from DDR1 to DDR5, continuously improving in both power efficiency and transmission speed. The DRAM supply landscape is oligopolistic, with market share largely held by SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron, which collectively accounted for 97.49% of the market in 2024. In 2025, DDR4 and DDR5 experienced the most notable price increases, with DDR4 prices multiplying several times yet remaining in short supply, triggering hoarding activities. In Q4, Samsung, NAND, and Micron significantly raised DRAM prices by 15-30%.
However, under the demand for high AI computing power, HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) has become the core development direction for DRAM chips. HBM is a high-performance DRAM based on 3D stacking technology, meeting the high computational demands of AI agents like AI servers. Since 2025, HBM has been a focal point in the DRAM space, with price increases and gross margins far exceeding other chip types, prompting manufacturers to shift production capacity towards it. For example, Micron's HBM capacity is fully sold out through the end of 2026, and Samsung has allocated 70% of its DRAM capacity to HBM production. Additionally, NAND Flash is a non-volatile memory technology primarily used for data storage. With continuous iteration in storage technology, its equivalent process node has advanced to the 1x/1y nm level, with some leading manufacturers achieving mass production at the 1z nm level, steadily increasing storage capacity. However, product supply is also oligopolistic; according to TrendForce data based on 2024 revenue, Samsung, SK Group, Kioxia, Micron, and SanDisk collectively held a 95.3% market share.
The supply of both NAND Flash and DRAM is clearly monopolized by a few leading players, with significant overlap, granting them substantial control over capacity and pricing due to scarcity. For instance, in Q4 2025, several manufacturers simultaneously raised prices for both memory chips, with some increasing NAND flash contract prices by over 50%. According to statistics from TrendForce, NAND flash contract prices surged by up to 20% on November 28 last year, and by January 12 this year, all product categories continued their upward trend, with the 64GB MicroSD card seeing a nearly 10% increase. On the demand side, the continuous iteration of large AI models is accelerating the proliferation of AI application scenarios. AI agents, including both enterprise and personal agents, are emerging rapidly in the market like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. For example, AI PCs became the best-selling and fastest-growing PC product category in 2025, with penetration rates exceeding 50%. According to Gartner's forecast, global shipments of AI PCs are expected to reach 114 million units in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 165.5%. Similarly, AI applications have spurred explosive demand for high-performance servers, driving a doubling trend in AI server growth over the past two years, with penetration nearing 20% in 2025. Based on Frost & Sullivan data, the global server market reached 16 million units in 2024, with AI servers accounting for 12.5%; it is projected to grow to 19.5 million units by 2030, with AI servers comprising 33.3% of the market.
The increasing penetration of AI across multiple scenarios is largely attributable to capital investments from global cloud providers. TrendForce data shows that the eight major cloud service providers—Google, AWS, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu—collectively recorded capital expenditures of $260.9 billion in 2024, with a four-year CAGR of 21.6%, projected to reach $602 billion by 2026, representing a CAGR of 51.9%. These expenditures are primarily directed towards AI servers and related AI fields. This implies that demand for AI applications will continue to surge over the next two years. However, it is noteworthy that for domestic AI terminal manufacturers in China, high dependence on a few oligopolistic suppliers for memory chips makes production highly passive, forcing them to balance cost considerations with user acceptance of price hikes; some manufacturers have had to lower their target sales volumes for the year. Nonetheless, the promising demand outlook is likely to accelerate domestic substitution, thereby creating development opportunities for China's memory chip industry chain, with related stocks in the A-share, Hong Kong, and US markets presenting excellent investment opportunities.
A detailed look at the A-share, Hong Kong, and US market stocks reveals that their market value performance aligns closely with the timeline of this super-cycle, which began in 2024, saw substantial gains with high volume in 2025, and entered an accelerated phase in 2026. According to East Money Choice data, there are 98 memory chip-related stocks in the A-share market. Among them, the relatively pure-play market leaders are Shenzhen Longsys Electronics Co.,Ltd. (301308.SZ) and Infotmic Co.,Ltd. Shenzhen Longsys's core products encompass embedded storage, solid-state drives, portable storage, and memory modules, widely used in mainstream consumer smart terminals (e.g., smartphones, wearables, computers) and data centers. The company successfully developed five SLC NAND Flash memory chips ranging from 512Mb to 8Gb in 2024, actively expanding its small-capacity memory chip product line to include MLC NAND Flash and NOR Flash, while accelerating the layout of high-performance enterprise-grade eSSDs (PCIe Gen 5.0). The company's revenue is primarily derived from memory products, with a impressive CAGR of 44.8% from 2022 to 2024, and revenue growth of 26.12% in the first three quarters of 2025, with profitability keeping pace with revenue growth. As a leading domestic memory chip player, it stands to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of import substitution. Currently, the company's PB ratio is 20.1x, positioning it in the upper-middle range within the sector across the three markets (HK, A, US).
Infotmic Co.,Ltd. is primarily engaged in the distribution of electronic components, including memory chips. At the end of 2024, it successfully secured the distributorship for Yangtze Memory Storage Technology Co., Ltd. (YMTC), a leading Chinese memory chip manufacturer, with this product line achieving sales in the hundreds of millions of RMB in the first half of 2025. YMTC is a domestic memory chip leader, having achieved rapid iteration in 3D NAND Flash technology through its self-developed core Xtacking stacking architecture breakthrough, alongside continuous breakthroughs in production capacity. Infotmic is poised to benefit from the development opportunities brought by YMTC. The company has maintained double-digit revenue growth in recent years, but its profitability has been unimpressive, reporting losses for three consecutive years, with a projected loss of 97 million yuan for 2025. Due to persistent losses and a high debt ratio, the company faces significant operational pressure; as of September 2025, its debt-to-asset ratio stood at 81.2%, although it substantially reduced interest-bearing debt during the period. Following its four consecutive limit-ups, the stock lacks long-term institutional investment interest, presenting relatively high speculative risks.
According to Futu行情 data, there are seven memory-related stocks in the US market, including Micron Technology, Seagate Technology, Western Digital, and Silicon Motion Technology Corp., among which Micron and Western Digital are the dual leaders in the memory concept. Micron's main products include the two dominant memory chips, DRAM and NAND Flash. Benefiting from rising memory chip prices, its performance has maintained mid-to-high double-digit growth over the past three years. Western Digital possesses a diverse portfolio of storage products covering cloud services, client devices, and consumer products. Its growth rate is slightly lower than Micron's but maintained a high growth trend in 2025. Since 2025, both Micron Technology and Western Digital have exhibited strong upward momentum in market capitalization, surging 3.74 times and 4.42 times, respectively. Valuation-wise, their PB ratios are 7.6x and 14x, respectively, and due to high profitability, their PE ratios are only 38x and 35.6x. Both companies primarily serve the global market, with relatively low revenue exposure to China, thus having a weaker impact on domestic substitution. Given the expectation of further memory chip price increases, their valuations still have room for upside.
The Hong Kong market has relatively few pure-play memory chip stocks, with the core player being GIGADEVICE, one of China's leading Fabless chip design companies. Its main products include memory, microcontroller units (MCUs), sensor chips, and analog chips. In the Flash memory segment, the company ranks second globally and first in mainland China for NOR Flash market share, demonstrating sustained upward momentum and a solid industry position. Memory chips contribute nearly 70% of its revenue, and its overall performance has moved in sync with the industry, achieving double-digit growth starting in 2024. Driven by increases in both revenue and product average selling prices, its profitability has improved significantly. In terms of valuation, its A-share market cap surged 1.8 times since 2025. It listed on the Hong Kong stock market on January 13 this year, garnering strong investor interest, with its market cap rising over 80% within eight trading days; its current PB ratio is 10x. Furthermore, upstream players in the industry chain will also benefit from rising memory chip prices and domestic substitution. SMIC (00981) and Huahong Semiconductor (01347), as the two leading wafer foundry companies in Hong Kong, are poised to fully capitalize on the industry's growth红利. Both companies offer 8-inch and 12-inch wafers, primarily used for memory and power devices, covering applications in smartphones, tablets, consumer electronics, industrial, and automotive sectors. In Q3 2025, SMIC's monthly wafer capacity exceeded 1 million pieces, with a capacity utilization rate over 95%, while Huahong's capacity was 468,000 pieces, with long-term utilization exceeding 100%.
Despite the simultaneous increase in volume and price for memory chips, the financial performance of these two companies has shown some divergence. SMIC has maintained double-digit revenue growth over the past two years, with profitability significantly improving in 2025, as its net profit margin rose to 11% in the first three quarters. Although Huahong's revenue growth has caught up, its profitability remains poor, having declined substantially for three consecutive years. However, driven by the downstream sector, both companies' market caps have performed well since 2025, increasing by 1.45 times and 4 times, respectively, with PB valuations both at 3.8x. In summary, the memory chip industry is experiencing a super-cycle. Against the backdrop of supply scarcity and surging demand, simultaneous growth in volume and price is likely to become the norm, potentially driving continuous explosive growth in industry market size and participant performance, presenting excellent investment opportunities across the industry chain. Investors may focus on sector leaders in the A-share, Hong Kong, and US markets, as well as stocks with strong financial performance. GIGADEVICE, being newly listed in Hong Kong with high market attention, has the potential to become the leading memory concept stock in the Hong Kong market this year.
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