Nomura Projects Samsung and SK Hynix Could Rally Over 110% on AI Memory Boom

South Korea's two dominant chipmakers are riding a wave of AI-driven memory demand that analysts say is far from peaking, with Nomura forecasting potential gains of more than 110% for both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix over the next 12 months.

Nomura, which carries a "buy" rating on both stocks, estimates SK Hynix shares could reach 4 million won and Samsung Electronics could climb to 590,000 won, representing upside of roughly 117% and 110%, respectively, from Monday's closing prices.

The projections come after both companies already posted extraordinary returns. SK Hynix shares have risen 183% this year, following a 274% gain in 2025. Samsung Electronics is up 134% so far in 2026, after gaining 125% the prior year. Those rallies have been the primary engine behind the Kospi index, which notched a 75% gain in 2025 and has added 78% so far this year.

The thesis rests on surging demand for high-bandwidth memory, or HBM — chips used in AI training and inference workloads. Nomura describes the memory sector as being in a "structural growth phase" that traces back to the launch of ChatGPT in December 2022, an event the brokerage credits with triggering substantial growth in HBM demand.

SK Hynix is the leading producer in the HBM market and is expected to spearhead production of the next-generation HBM4 chips. Samsung is also positioned as a strong contender in that space. Both companies rank among the world's largest HBM suppliers.

According to Nomura, customer demand for HBM and high-performance memory already surpasses the industry's mid- to long-term supply capabilities. The brokerage projects memory demand could rise by "several thousand-fold" over the next five years, while industry supply is expected to grow only about five to six times over the same period.

Nomura characterizes the current environment as a "triple memory super-cycle spanning DRAM, HBM and SSD memory" that began in the third quarter of 2025. The brokerage attributes part of the demand surge to the growing adoption of Retrieval-Augmented Generation, or RAG, and agentic AI applications, which have accelerated consumption of conventional server infrastructure and solid-state drives.

"Against this structural backdrop, we believe memory vendors have entered an unprecedented phase of rapid revenue growth and margin expansion in a short period of time," the Nomura note states.

The firm expects annual revenue and earnings growth of approximately 30% for memory suppliers over the next three to five years, supported by a similar rate of volume growth, stable or slightly higher commodity memory prices under long-term agreements, and improving HBM profitability. Nomura also estimates a seven- to eightfold profit increase for the sector in 2026 alone.

First-quarter results from both companies reinforce that outlook. SK Hynix reported a fivefold year-on-year increase in operating profit for the quarter ending March 2026. Samsung's operating profit surged more than 750% over the same period.

Looking further ahead, Nomura flags the rise of agentic AI as a catalyst for an entirely new category of semiconductor demand — including CPUs and commodity memory — that will drive additional growth in AI server deployments and broaden the base of memory consumption well beyond current applications.

Whether supply constraints ease or tighten will be a key variable to watch, as the gap between soaring demand and capacity expansion remains the central tension shaping valuations across the memory sector.

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