Japan SPE sector: Major investment plans in South Korea: Potential upside versus WFE market forecasts on frontloaded investment

Research evidence excerpt

Japan SPE sector: Major investment plans in South Korea: Potential upside versus WFE market forecasts on frontloaded investment

Japan SPE sector: Major investment plans in Global Markets Research

South Korea 3 July 2026

EQUITY: JAPAN SEMICONDUCTOR PRODUCTION EQUIPMENT

Potential upside versus WFE market forecasts on Research Analysts

frontloaded investment Japan semiconductor production equipment

Tokyo Electron and others likely to benefit from acquisition of advanced Atsushi Yoshioka - NSC

NAND process orders atsushi.yoshioka@nomura.com

+81 3 6703 1176

Update on scale of investment at memory producers

This week saw a number of news stories about capex at memory producers. On 29 June,

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix announced their longer-term large-scale investment

plans in South Korea as part of the South Korean government's three flagship

megaprojects, and on 2 July they provided some more details of these investment along

with an overview of SK Hynix's new NAND investment plans. On 3 July Kioxia Holdings

[285A] announced the start of 10th-generation BiCS production at its Kitakami Plant Fab2

facility, adding that it might revise its capex plan (annual average of ¥470bn over three

years through 29/3) if the growth outlook for the NAND market were to improve.

Faster investment under existing plans and new NAND capex plans in South Korea

As Figure 1 demonstrates, both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are stepping up

existing investments and bringing forward completion dates (KRW2,030trn at Pyeongtaek

P5 and Yongin for Samsung Electronics, KRW600bn at Yongin for SK Hynix). The two

companies also plan to build two memory plants in Gwangju, with total investments of

KRW800trn. Elsewhere, Samsung is building packaging plants in Cheonan and Onyang at