BofA Global Memory Tech: Weekly Themes Covering Investor Feedback, TSMC, and Spot Prices
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Bank of America highlights a structural improvement in the current memory chip cycle, making the industry resemble foundries with reduced cyclicality, stable pricing, and high margins. While 2H26 average selling prices may not rise as sharply, they are expected to remain at historical highs. DRAM spot prices for DDR4 and DDR5 continued their robust surge, increasing approximately 10% this week following massive gains in late 2025. However, BofA notes this spot price appreciation is largely driven by speculative trading rather than fundamental demand. NAND spot prices also rose 5% to 10% weekly. The firm emphasizes that wafer capacity for commodity DRAM is declining as manufacturers transition to HBM and premium LPDDR5/GDDR7 or migrate to new nodes. TSMC's highly optimistic guidance, projecting 30% revenue growth and capital expenditures exceeding $50 billion in 2026, benefits SK Hynix due to its dominant 60%+ global HBM market share. Conversely, TSMC's leadership in 2nm nodes and CoWoS packaging limits Samsung's foundry market share growth. Furthermore, recent fundraising by Chinese semiconductor and AI companies via IPOs totaled less than $15 billion, with memory firms targeting only about $6 billion, representing a negligible impact on global memory capital expenditure. BofA expects the NAND shortage to ease by late 2026.