Yuanta Securities Korea (003470.KS) raised its target price for Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) to 630,000 won, citing an extended memory chip cycle.
Baek Gil-hyun, an analyst at Yuanta Securities Korea, lifted the target price to 630,000 won from 530,000 won set on June 1, an increase of about 18.9%, in a report on the 23rd titled "A Longer Cycle Rather Than Slowing Memory Price Gains." The analyst also maintained a buy rating.
The target price was derived by applying a target price-to-book ratio of 3.5 times to Yuanta's estimated 2027 book value per share of 179,148 won for Samsung Electronics. Yuanta's target is the second-highest among domestic brokerages, trailing the 650,000 won set by Korea Investment & Securities in late July. That implies 128% upside from the previous session's close of 276,500 won.
Yuanta expects supply bottlenecks in memory chips to persist through 2028. "The market is worried about a possible peak-out in 2028 because of new capacity additions and noise around high-bandwidth memory," Baek said. "But given that HBM is eating into conventional DRAM capacity and that the spread of artificial intelligence inference is driving demand for high-capacity memory, supply constraints are likely to ease later than expected."
The analyst also pointed to greater room for shareholder returns. "A prolonged upcycle is structurally expanding free cash flow, so the next three-year shareholder return policy for 2027 through 2029, due to be announced in January 2027, could be strengthened further," Baek said. "In that sense, the recent share price pullback is a buying opportunity from a medium- to long-term perspective."
Yuanta forecast Samsung Electronics will post 2026 revenue of 745.987 trillion won and operating profit of 358.485 trillion won, up 123.6% and 722.2% from last year, respectively. For 2027, the brokerage projects revenue of 1,193.508 trillion won and operating profit of 590.492 trillion won, extending a run of record results.
