KOSPI Hits Record High as Memory Giants Rally on HBM4 Breakthroughs

South Korean stocks soared to a fresh all-time high on Thursday, led by a relentless rally in memory chipmakers that tracked the overnight surge in U.S. storage sectors.

 

The benchmark KOSPI index opened higher and continued to climb, gaining as much as 2.7% by press time to touch a historic peak of 5,499.79 points.

 

The nation’s memory giants spearheaded the advance:

• Samsung Electronics surged nearly 6% to a record high.
• SK Hynix gained approximately 4%.

 

The rally was underpinned by explosive trade data. South Korean customs figures released Wednesday showed that semiconductor exports for the first 10 days of February skyrocketed 137.6% year-over-year to $6.73 billion.

 

On the same day, Samsung Electronics CTO Song Jai-hyuk stated that the robust demand for memory is expected to persist through 2027. He emphasized that Samsung’s HBM4 chips are showing "solid" manufacturing yields, with customers expressing high satisfaction with their performance. Markets widely expect Samsung to begin shipping HBM4 products to Nvidia following next week's Lunar New Year holiday.

 

Meanwhile, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won recently met with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in the U.S. to discuss HBM supply and broader AI business cooperation.

 

The KOSPI has surged nearly 30% year-to-date, driven by an AI-fueled semiconductor super-cycle and policy reforms aimed at boosting market confidence.

 

The movement mirrored a massive overnight rally in U.S. storage names: SanDisk jumped 10.65%, Micron Technology surged 9.94%, Western Digital rose over 2%, and Seagate gained nearly 3%.

 

Despite a recent SemiAnalysis report suggesting Micron might be excluded from the initial rollout of Nvidia’s "Vera Rubin" platform, Micron CFO Mark Murphy clarified Wednesday that its HBM4 has entered mass production—ahead of internal expectations—and has already begun shipping to customers.

 

Wall Street analysts remain aggressively bullish:

 

Morgan Stanley raised its price target on Micron from $350 to $450, maintaining an "Overweight" rating and projecting 2026 EPS of $52. The bank cited a 130% premium in DDR5 spot prices over January contract prices.

 

Deutsche Bank lifted its Micron target from $300 to $500, citing a favorable supply-demand dynamic. Analyst Melissa Weathers noted that HBM is "three times more silicon-intensive" than traditional DRAM, creating a "supply shock" that the market has yet to fully grasp. She expects the supply crunch to persist through 2027 or even 2028.