Korea: Positive strategic view intact despite sharp drawdown

Research evidence excerpt

Korea: Positive strategic view intact despite sharp drawdown

Goldman Sachs Asia-Pacific Portfolio Strategy

1. Semiconductor memory sector: Core thesis & Addressing investor concerns

Reaffirming our core semiconductor memory thesis

Korea’s leading leading semiconductor companies- Samsung Electronics and Hynix-

account for 50% and 60% of the KOSPI and KOSPI 200 indices, which makes the view on

this sector central to the outlook for the overall market. We summarize the constructive

thesis that our global technology hardware analysts have articulated and then address

the principal concerns investors are voicing. While many of these concerns are valid and

must be monitored, our central case is that the memory cycle is likely to be stronger and

last longer than previous ones and that current market pricing does not reflect this

prospect.

Our core thesis is based on five pillars.

n Demand for ‘compute’ (processing power needed to process digital workloads) is

growing rapidly and for a sustained period, driven largely by the shift from

inference AI to the agentic AI economy. Our global semiconductor team expects

global token usage to increase 24x by 2030 to 120 tr/month.

n Hyperscaler capex continues to scale to satisfy compute demand. Our analysts

expect investment during 2026-2028 to be $811bn (+82%), $1,241bn (+53%), and

$1,396bn (+13%), with total spend from 2026-2030 to be around $6tr.

n Demand for compute significantly outstrips supply. Our semiconductor analysts

expect record global DRAM and NAND undersupply in 2026 and a further new

record shortfall in 2027, with continuing (albeit narrower) undersupply in 2028

extending into 2029-2030 (although they do not have formal estimates yet for these

outyears).

n Longest and deepest memory undersupply drives pricing power and