DRAM gains slow for second straight month
NAND flash prices essentially flat
According to industry sources on the 3rd, the average fixed contract price for DDR4 (8Gb 1Gx8), a general-purpose DRAM for PCs, stood at $26 in September, up 4% from the previous month.
The price itself is an all-time high. But the pace of increase has clearly slowed. The monthly gain fell for a second consecutive month, from 14.29% in July to 4.17% in August and 4% in September. Given that the price jumped from $11.50 in January to $26 in September, absolute price levels remain high, but the mood has shifted from earlier months, when gains approached double digits.
The slowdown is even more pronounced in NAND flash. The average fixed contract price for 128Gb 16Gx8 MLC, used in memory cards and USB drives, was $30.61 in September, up just 0.44% from the previous month.
The product's monthly gain fell from 36.29% in April to 9.73% in May, 8.72% in June, 4.26% in July and 1.42% in August, before turning essentially flat in September. Analysts say the price surge has pushed cost burdens for makers of consumer products such as PCs and smartphones close to their limits, making further increases hard to absorb.
Signs of cooling are also appearing in the spot market. DRAMeXchange said trading in the DRAM market was sluggish in late September as purchase inquiries all but dried up ahead of month-end. For NAND, it said buyers held back from placing orders as end users adopted a wait-and-see stance, with some product prices weakening. With fixed contract prices decelerating, so-called chase buying in the spot market is also weakening.
Micron's earnings surprise narrows
Impact of expanding long-term supply deals takes hold
Samsung's third-quarter results the real test
Signs of slowing memory price gains also surfaced in results at Micron, the industry's third-largest player.
The U.S. memory maker reported fiscal fourth-quarter (June–August) revenue of $54.23 billion (about 73.18 trillion won) and adjusted earnings per share of $33.42 on the 30th of last month local time, beating market expectations.
But the revenue-based earnings surprise narrowed to about 6%, well below the roughly 31% margin in the prior quarter. Morgan Stanley noted that the beat was smaller than in the previous three quarters, when results exceeded market forecasts by 20% to 40%.
Some attribute the lower earnings volatility to the expansion of long-term agreements (LTAs), under which chipmakers guarantee three to five years of supply to global big tech customers in exchange for lower prices.
That has turned market attention to Samsung Electronics' preliminary third-quarter results, expected on the 8th. The one-month consensus for Samsung's third-quarter operating profit compiled by financial data provider FnGuide stands at about 105.6 trillion won, down roughly 4.5% from the 110.6 trillion won projected three months ago.
Analysts say Samsung's profit growth could also be capped as long-term supply contracts account for a larger share of sales. The company is said to be pursuing a strategy of locking in 60% to 70% of its memory production capacity under long-term deals.
Even if memory prices stay high, a larger share of long-term contracts could limit how quickly those prices feed into earnings.
Too early to call a supercycle peak
Memory prices seen rising further in fourth quarter
Still, there are plenty of counterarguments that slowing price gains should not immediately be read as the end of the supercycle. TrendForce forecasts that fourth-quarter contract prices for conventional DRAM will rise another 10% to 15% from the previous quarter, with overall NAND flash prices up 15% to 20%. Demand from AI servers and cloud service providers remains strong, and memory makers are prioritizing capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and server DRAM, which will keep PC and mobile memory in short supply, it said.
Enterprise SSDs, in particular, are expected to see even larger price increases as AI inference drives demand higher.
Micron also played down the possibility that the supply shortage will end soon. Asked on the earnings conference call about concerns that the memory cycle has peaked, Chief Executive Sanjay Mehrotra said: "We see demand exceeding supply in 2027 and 2028, with supply-demand tighter than this year," adding, "It's difficult to gauge when supply and demand will return to balance."
Market focus shifts from prices to earnings durability
Samsung results could reignite peak-out debate
Ultimately, market attention is shifting from whether memory prices can rise further to how long current high profitability can last.
If Samsung's third-quarter operating profit falls short of expectations, or if DRAM and NAND price gains and operating margins decelerate faster than forecast, the debate over a chip-sector "peak-out" could flare up again.
"The market's focus will now shift from the size of profits to their durability," an industry official said. "How long these high operating profits can be sustained will determine the market's assessment."
