Samsung Elec shares hit record high on red-hot earnings outlook ahead of Q4 guidance

Samsung Electronics Seocho headquarters/ Yonhap
SEOUL, January 07 (AJP) - Shares of Samsung Electronics climbed to a fresh record high Wednesday, extending a near-nonstop rally since late December as investors bet on the company’s strongest quarterly and annual earnings in seven years.

The stock has surged about 32 percent since Dec. 22, rising from a Dec. 19 close of 106,300 won to 141,000 won Wednesday, amid mounting optimism over a renewed memory supercycle fueled by artificial intelligence demand.

Samsung Electronics will release its guidance for fourth-quarter and full-year earnings before the market opens in Seoul on Thursday.

The rally has been driven by a sharp tightening in the global memory market, spanning legacy DRAM products to cutting-edge high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in AI accelerators. Rapid adoption of AI applications has triggered aggressive stockpiling, pushing demand well ahead of supply.

“Demand for DRAM and NAND currently exceeds supply by more than 30 percent, and Samsung is positioned to benefit most from the tightening market,” said Kim Dong-won, head of research at KB Securities, in a recent report.

KB Securities on Tuesday raised its estimate for Samsung’s operating profit for the October–December period to 20.3 trillion won ($14.0 billion), the highest quarterly level since the third quarter of 2018, when profits peaked during the previous memory supercycle. Quarterly revenue is projected at around 90 trillion won ($62.0 billion), led by a strong rebound in the semiconductor business as memory prices surged.

The brokerage estimates that operating profit at Samsung’s device solutions (DS) division reached 16.3 trillion won in the fourth quarter, supported by quarter-on-quarter price gains of 41 percent for DRAM and 20 percent for NAND.

Looking ahead, KB Securities raised its target price for Samsung to 180,000 won, citing expectations that operating profit in 2026 could reach 123 trillion won—nearly triple last year’s level—as HBM shipments accelerate and AI server demand continues to expand.

The firm forecasts that Samsung’s HBM shipments will triple next year, with market share expected to double as the company secures new supply contracts with major global customers, including Nvidia and Google.

Broader sentiment toward memory and semiconductor stocks has also been supported by comments from Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, at CES 2026 in Las Vegas. Huang said Nvidia’s next-generation chips are now in “full production,” reinforcing expectations of sustained demand for AI infrastructure and underpinning the current memory upcycle.

gives a speech at CES 2026 Yonhap