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

Driven by the overnight surge in U.S. stocks related to storage concepts, on the morning of March 18, the A-share storage chip sector rose sharply. Tongyou Technology hit the daily limit, Chengbang Shares, China Electronics Port, and others surged to the daily limit. Langke Technology, Shenke Da, Xice Testing rose over 10%, and multiple stocks like Baiwei Storage and Guoke Micro followed the rally.

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 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 experts 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, with losses potentially reaching hundreds of billions of dollars. It would also exacerbate global semiconductor supply bottlenecks, further restricting supply to industries from automotive and computers to smartphones.

Price Hike Trend Has Become Industry Consensus

Alongside the strike wave, the storage industry is currently in a high boom 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 said that unlike previous cycles, even if memory prices rise now, demand will not decline. The supply shortage issue will not be substantially resolved until at least the second half of 2027.

“Demand explosion & supply rigidity, continuous price increases, storage enters a super cycle,” Southwest Securities pointed out. The unexpected iteration and upgrade of AI large models, along with explosive growth in global token consumption, have created massive data storage, processing, and retrieval needs. 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 excessive capacity and capital expenditure in the last cycle, manufacturers are now more cautious in expanding capacity in this cycle.

China Galaxy Securities also believes that the current point marks a new beginning for the next cycle of the storage chip sector. With the rapid growth of 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 involved in the storage chip concept, 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, double in value. KeXiang Shares, Guoke Micro, and Jintaiyang have all gained over 70% in the interval.

From a funding perspective, data from Eastmoney Choice shows that since March, 28 storage chip concept stocks have attracted over 10 million yuan in financing from retail investors. Among them, Baiwei Storage’s net financing purchase reached 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, and Huahong Company, GigaDevice, and Beijing Junzheng had net purchases between 200 million and 500 million yuan.

(Source: Eastmoney Research Center)