Memory industry in 2024 from the bottom of the price of the bottom of rebound, although the Lunar New Year holiday affected the supply chain’s willingness to pull goods, the global economy is slow to recover, the memory supply chain for the second quarter of the substantive demand is still holding wait and see, however, the upstream memory makers in the first quarter of the supply continued to tighten.
The industry expects, even if the first half of the market terminal demand is not as expected, the original factory will still support DRAM and NAND Flash prices moderate upward, to cope with the traditional peak season to intensify the supply of tight, do not rule out that the second quarter and then set off a wave of replenishment price wave, it is expected that the price of the second quarter of the upward trend will become the second half of the industry wind direction ball.
The industry pointed out that although the overseas agent market still maintains the demand for stocking, the domestic economy is into a downturn in the haze, in the outside world a bullish demand for memory warming growth, and there is no lack of conservative view of the industry that the short-term price of memory market price increase will slow down, the memory factory and the terminal industry will enter a tug-of-war bargaining, by reducing the impact of the supply to promote the price of memory to go up.
The memory module industry privately pointed out that the recent market demand is not hot, but the price is not up, but also down the situation, although the market boom signal chaos is not clear, the price of the original memory factory attitude is very firm.
After all, it is not easy to lift the market price, a single quarter to profitability goals can not be lost, and price reductions can not stimulate demand increase, so the future price adjustment of the increase in the degree of although all parties may not be consistent with the expectations of the original plant will not be reduced in price is the view of the will be the same.
Memory price surge of the main section seems to be facing cooling, the industry believes that the future price trend still depends on the attitude of the upstream factory, due to the release of the first quarter to the memory module industry shortage of supplies, and not affected by the market wait-and-see atmosphere, the original factory priority supply to the cloud servers and AI-related applications customers, is expected to benefit from the AI topic of the extension of the burn, including the United States and other non-domestic regions in 2024! Demand is expected to bottom out in 2024, benefiting from the AI topic.
Each NAND original factory is expected to wait until the end of the 2nd quarter of 2024 to restore production capacity, but if the demand recovery is weak, do not rule out adjusting the schedule in response to demand, and SK Hynix and other planning to increase DRAM production capacity, mainly targeting high-end products such as HBM or DDR5, the future expansion of CoWoS production capacity to hit the ground running, the consumption of HBM’s bits can be expected to grow from In 2023, HBM will account for a high single-digit proportion of DRAM, and in 2024, it will rise to about 20%.
The market demand is chaotic in the short term, however, various memory module operators have long been sharpening their knives to improve inventory stocking, waiting for the next wave of memory to significantly increase the opportunity.
The industry privately revealed that until the market demand recovers in the second half of the year, the supply chain pulling the goods may be caught off guard, after all, the original factory’s production capacity to increase the supply of at least 3 months or so, to prepare for the completion of the stock in the 3rd quarter ahead of time, when the various rush of the goods will be staged in turn, the expected price of memory may be in the 2nd quarter of the early response.
However, it is worth noting that the high price will likely suppress the market demand correction, resulting in memory module factory challenges and risks., The memory module industry, 2024 price fluctuations, and inventory management will be the biggest test, but the annual operation will have the opportunity to go back to the 2022 memory prices high-grade situation, the product ASP increase, will drive the revenue and profitability of each synchronized upward.
