HBM chips key theme for Samsung Nov investors forum

Samsung Electronics Co. will hold an investors forum in Hong Kong in November, where it is expected to share details about the development of high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips and supply conditions for the next-generation chips, according to industry officials on Friday.

At the Samsung Electronics Investors Forum 2023, an annual investor relations event, the fourth-generation HBM chip model HBM3 is expected to be a key theme.

A large number of executives from Samsung’s Device Solutions division in charge of the memory chip business will attend the forum.

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, BlackRock, Fidelity and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC were among the major global investors invited to the Hong Kong event. Last year’s was held in Singapore.

At the forum held every autumn, Samsung has addressed topics attracting investors' attention.

In 2021 and 2022, it discussed in detail its foundry business -- producing chips for fabless companies, or chip designers.

HBM is a high-capacity, high-performance semiconductor chip, demand of which is soaring as it is used to power generative AI devices like ChatGPT, high-performance data centers and machine learning platforms.

It stacks multiple DRAMs vertically and connects them by drilling 1,024 holes, used as data passages.

As a lot of DRAM is accumulated on such chips, they boast a large data storage capacity and dramatically increases data processing speed compared to traditional DRAM products. They are at least five times more expensive.

Hwang Sang-joon, executive vice president of DRAM product & technology at Samsung Electronics, said at Korea Investment Week 2023 this week that the HBM market is expected to more than double next year from this year.

“HBM3, demand for which has grown explosively, has emerged as a key stock-moving factor for Samsung Electronics and other companies,” said a brokerage analyst. “Samsung will be flooded with questions about HBM3 during the November forum.”

Samsung is said to set to supply HMB3 chips to US graphics chip designer Nvidia Corp. and US-based fabless semiconductor designer Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD).

According to market tracker TrendForce, the global HBM market is forecast to expand to $8.9 billion in 2024, versus $3.9 billion in 2023.

Samsung Electronics’ share price has been hovering between 50,000 and 75,000 won ($38-$53) since early last year.

On Friday, it closed little changed at 72,000 won, down 26% from its all-time high of 96,800 touched in mid-January 2021.

Write to Ik-Hwan Kim at lovepen@hankyung.com
 


Yeonhee Kim edited this article.