Samsung's stock price surges by over 11%, market value突破s 1 trillion

Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) opened with a gain of over 11% on May 6, reaching a record high in stock price, and its market value exceeded one trillion dollars for the first time, leading the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) to rise by 5%.

May 5th is Korea's Children's Day, and the South Korean market is closed for the entire day, so Samsung missed the global storage stock surge on that day. However, in just these two days, major price signals have occurred within this sector:

SK Hynix surged by 11.28% on May 4th, and Micron soared over 11% on May 5th to a record high in the U.S. stock market. Micron's revenue for the quarter increased nearly 200% year-on-year, and DRAM, NAND, and HBM business lines all set historical records. Their Q3 revenue guidance has already exceeded the company's entire fiscal year of 2024.

The compressed catch-up momentum accumulated over two trading days was concentrated and released on Samsung as soon as the South Korean market opened on May 6th, essentially being a compressed "catch-up and return to normal" phenomenon.

Semiconductor Division Sole Support for 90% of Profits

Samsung Electronics has just released its financial statement for the first quarter of 2026. The company's revenue for the quarter was 133.9 trillion won (approximately 89.96 billion USD), a year-on-year increase of about 70%; operating profit was 57.2 trillion won (approximately 38.36 billion USD), surging more than eightfold year-on-year, setting the best single-quarter performance in the company's history, and significantly exceeding market consensus expectations.

In this, the semiconductor DS division's operating profit for the single quarter reached as high as 53.7 trillion won, accounting for about 94% of the total company's profit— Samsung Electronics has, at this moment, almost become a pure storage company in terms of profit structure.

During the earnings call, the management's tone was resolute: the current supply is "far from able to meet" customer demands; quotas for certain customers have been locked in until 2027, and the expectation of supply shortage is extending towards 2028. This statement echoes Micron CEO Mehrotra's earlier public declaration that "the storage supply-demand gap has just begun," to define a longer time scale together for the upcycle of the storage industry.

JPMorgan Chase Significantly Increases Target Price by 57%

After the release of the quarterly report, JPMorgan Chase raised its projections for Samsung's earnings per share in 2026 by 31% to 33% on May 4th, with the target price leaping to 350,000 won, an increase of about 57%, while maintaining an overweight rating, with the theme set as "enhanced memory execution + AI tailwind."

The core bullish logic of the analysts revolves around three aspects: the memory demand for AI workloads is expanding comprehensively from GPUs to CPUs; NAND's value is being re-evaluated due to the explosive demand for KV-cache offloading; the duration of supply constraints will significantly exceed previous market expectations. This report quickly triggered a chain effect in the institutional circle, with many sell-side organizations subsequently following up to revise their target prices, forming a self-reinforcing upward revision of expectations.

Strike Risk Unintentionally Becomes a Supply Premium Catalyst

On the surface, it seems like a bearish labor dispute, but the market has interpreted it as an additional reinforcement of the expectation for supply shortages.

About 90,000 union members of Samsung (more than 70% of the total workforce in South Korea) have voted to authorize a strike at the end of April, planning an all-out strike lasting 18 days from May 21 to June 7. The 40,000 person demonstration on April 23rd has already caused a substantial impact: Samsung's memory wafer production decreased by 18.4%, and its wafer foundry production plummeted by 58.1%. Typically, the recovery time of production capacity after a halt is twice as long as the halt