Supply Shortage Overlaps with Strike Wave - Storage Chips Explode! These 10 Stocks Receive Over 100 Million Yuan in Leveraged Fund Additions

Driven by overnight gains in U.S. stocks related to storage concepts, on the morning of March 18, the A-share storage chip sector surged unilaterally. Same Technology hit the 20% daily limit, Chengbang Shares, China Electronics Port, and others hit the daily limit with strong momentum. Langke Technology, Shenke Da, and Xice Testing rose over 10%, while Baiwei Storage, Guoke Micro, and several other stocks followed suit.

Samsung Union Prepares for Largest Strike in History

According to media reports, South Korea’s largest union organization, the “National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU),” announced that due to a breakdown in wage negotiations, the union has initiated a ten-day voting process, with results expected to be announced this Wednesday.

Union leaders stated that if no agreement is reached, a strike lasting 18 days is planned for May, which could impact about half of the capacity at the Pyeongtaek semiconductor plant in southern Seoul.

Industry insiders point out that as the world’s largest storage chip manufacturer, a shutdown of Samsung’s production lines could take up to two months to restart, resulting in losses potentially reaching hundreds of billions of dollars. It would also exacerbate global semiconductor supply bottlenecks, further restricting supply across industries from automotive and computers to smartphones.

Price Hike Continues as Industry Consensus Forms

Alongside the strike turmoil, the storage industry is currently in a high-growth cycle.

On March 17, South Korea’s SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won stated at NVIDIA’s GTC conference that due to systemic bottlenecks in chip production, the global memory chip shortage is likely to persist until 2030.

Chey Tae-won also predicted that prices for various storage chips such as DRAM, NAND, and HBM will continue to rise, with the upward trend possibly lasting for a long time.

Professional institutions generally share similar views. Market research firm CounterPoint Research noted that unlike previous cycles, even if prices rise, demand in the current memory market will not decline. The supply shortage issue is expected to be substantially resolved only by the second half of 2027.

“Demand explosion & supply rigidity, prices continue to rise, storage enters a super cycle,” Southwest Securities pointed out. The unexpected iteration and upgrade of AI large models have led to explosive growth in global token consumption, creating massive demand for data storage, processing, and retrieval. Overseas major manufacturers are shifting limited capacity toward high-margin HBM and DDR5 products, severely squeezing capacity for consumer and low-end storage chips, expanding the supply-demand gap. After over-expansion in capacity and capital expenditure in the last cycle, storage manufacturers are more cautious in their current expansion efforts.

China Galaxy Securities also believes that the current point marks a new beginning for the next cycle in the storage chip sector. With the rapid growth in AI server demand and domestic substitution, they are optimistic about investment opportunities in related listed companies in China’s storage industry chain.

Retail Investors Rush to Buy Multiple Concept Stocks

According to Eastmoney’s concept sector data, nearly 100 stocks in the A-share market are related to storage chips, with a total market value exceeding 4.7 trillion yuan. SMIC, North Huachuang, Huahong Company, GigaDevice, and China Microelectronics rank among the top five by market cap. Shennan Circuit, Baiwei Storage, and Jiangbolong also have market caps exceeding 100 billion yuan.

In terms of market performance, since the beginning of the year, the storage chip sector has seen three stocks—Baiwei Storage, Purun Shares, and others—more than double in value. Kexiang Shares, Guoke Micro, and Jintaiyang have all gained over 70% in the same period.

From a capital perspective, data from Eastmoney Choice shows that since March, 28 storage chip concept stocks have attracted over 10 million yuan in net financing from retail investors. Among them, Baiwei Storage’s net buy was as high as 2.012 billion yuan; Demingli received an additional 1.426 billion yuan from leveraged funds; Jiangbolong also saw a large influx of 622 million yuan. Huahong Company, GigaDevice, and Beijing Junzheng had net financing inflows between 200 million and 500 million yuan.

(Article source: Eastmoney Research Center)