Samsung logra altas ganancias, pero sus acciones caen: ¿Es este el primer problema en el mercado de memorias, que se encuentra en una situación de alta volatilidad?

Samsung Electronics delivered blockbuster preliminary fourth-quarter results , projecting operating profit of roughly 20 trillion won ($13.8 billion) and revenue of about 93 trillion won, easily ahead of market expectations and marking what would be the company’s strongest quarter on record. Operating profit more than tripled from a year earlier and surpassed Samsung’s prior peak from 2018, underscoring just how powerful the current memory upcycle has become. Yet despite the magnitude of the upside, Samsung shares finished down about 1.5% in South Korea, a reminder that expectations for memory and AI-linked semiconductor names have become extremely demanding.

The key driver of the quarter was memory pricing. Industry data and commentary from Counterpoint Research suggest DRAM and NAND prices surged roughly 40%–50% during the final quarter of 2025, driven by insatiable demand for AI servers and data center infrastructure. That pricing momentum is expected to persist into the first quarter of 2026, with another comparable increase anticipated before growth moderates to roughly 20% in the second quarter. For suppliers, this represents an unusually powerful phase of the memory cycle, with constrained supply, disciplined capex, and customers competing for limited volumes. Counterpoint described the environment as a “hyper-bull” phase, eclipsing even the conditions seen during the 2018 peak.

Samsung’s results reflect just how dominant memory has become in the company’s earnings mix. While full segment detail will not be released until later this month, analysts estimate that memory solutions accounted for roughly 40% of total revenue and an even larger share of operating profit in the quarter. As AI accelerator demand has surged—particularly for GPUs used in large-scale training and inference—memory has become a critical bottleneck. High-capacity DRAM and advanced NAND are no longer peripheral components; they are central to system performance and cost, giving suppliers extraordinary pricing power.

Still, the market’s muted reaction highlights an important nuance: Samsung remains behind SK Hynix in high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which is the most strategically important segment of the AI memory stack. HBM is essential for advanced AI processors from customers such as Nvidia, and SK Hynix has so far captured the leading share of this market. Samsung has made progress and is investing heavily to expand its HBM capacity, but investors remain sensitive to relative positioning. In other words, Samsung’s numbers were excellent—but in a market laser-focused on AI leadership, “excellent” is no longer sufficient to guarantee a positive stock reaction.

The stock’s pullback also reflects positioning and valuation. Samsung shares surged more than 145% over the past 12 months and entered the quarter near record highs, snapping a seven-session winning streak after the results. With that kind of run, investors were effectively pricing in near-perfect execution, sustained pricing momentum, and continued AI-driven upside. Any hint that expectations had run ahead of fundamentals—even if fundamentals remain strong—was enough to trigger profit-taking.

This dynamic matters well beyond Samsung. The memory rally has been one of the defining equity themes of 2025, and Samsung’s price action may serve as an early sentiment check for the group. In the U.S., Micron Technology is the most direct read-through, having more than tripled over the past year as DRAM and NAND pricing tightened. While Samsung’s guidance bodes well for Micron’s near-term earnings power, the reaction also raises the risk that investors begin to fade good news after an extended run.

The same caution applies to storage-focused names that were among the hottest stocks of 2025. Seagate Technology and Western Digital both delivered exceptional performance last year as enterprise and cloud demand rebounded alongside AI infrastructure spending. NAND-focused players such as Sandisk have also benefited from tighter supply and improving pricing. Samsung’s results reinforce that the fundamental backdrop—especially for NAND and DRAM—is still improving, but the market may be approaching a point where valuation and expectations begin to matter more than incremental upside in pricing.

Importantly, this does not signal a breakdown in fundamentals. Memory pricing remains firm, supply remains constrained, and AI-related demand continues to absorb capacity at an extraordinary pace. If anything, Samsung’s guidance confirms that the industry’s earnings power is still ramping. However, cycles in memory are notoriously volatile, and investors are keenly aware that hyper-bull phases do not last forever. As Barron’s and others have noted, chasing memory stocks late in the cycle has historically been risky, even when near-term numbers look spectacular.

In that context, Samsung’s modest decline despite record profit guidance may mark a tactical inflection point rather than a fundamental top. The sector’s long-term drivers—AI, data center expansion, and increasingly memory-intensive workloads—remain firmly intact. But after a year of extraordinary gains, the burden of proof has shifted. Going forward, investors will likely demand not just strong numbers, but clear evidence of sustained leadership in HBM, disciplined capital spending, and visibility into how long the current pricing environment can endure.