"NAND severe heat" arrives! Breaking through the limit guides the triggering of Wall Street consensus rebuilding, and Iron Man will become the new main force of AI military equipment.

Notice that, after the Japanese semiconductor manufacturer Kamen Rider gave a better-than-expected performance outlook, major Wall Street institutions are doubling their target prices. Since Kamen Rider's profit surge revealed in last Friday's financial report, Citigroup Global Markets Japan, JPMorgan Securities, and Morgan Stanley Securities have urgently raised their target prices. Morgan Stanley has listed the company as its top pick and stated that the growth in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the real world is expected to continue, with Kamen Rider having ample free cash flow and potential for shareholder return. In this wave of target price increases, at least five influential institutions have issued clear bullish signals, forming a solid "consensus wall": Morgan Stanley has directly listed Kamen Rider as a top pick. The analysts at the firm believe that the market had severely underestimated the sustained demand brought about by the deployment of AI. They particularly emphasized Kamen Rider's extremely robust free cash flow and hinted at a more robust shareholder return plan (including potential dividend policy adjustments), which is highly attractive to value investors. JP Morgan focuses on "supply-side discipline". The report highlights that unlike previous periods of frenzied production during peak cycles, major manufacturers are exercising extreme restraint in capital expenditures. This discipline, combined with the massive demand for AI servers for enterprise SSDs, will result in NAND prices remaining high for a longer period, thus unleashing significant profit elasticity. Citigroup Global Markets Japan believes the company is facing a revaluation, as the market recognizes that the storage industry is no longer subject to simple cyclical fluctuations but has certain growth attributes, shifting Kamen Rider's valuation logic from "cyclical stock discount" to "growth stock premium". Bank of America pointed out unexpected price elasticity. The bank noted that the market had previously believed that the increase in NAND prices was unsustainable, but in fact, the increase in average selling prices (ASP) has continuously exceeded the bottom line of conservative models. The bank warned that any short-selling logic based on "historical cycles" could fail in the current environment. SMBC Nikko Securities, as one of Japan's most influential domestic securities firms, introduced the term "NAND heatwave", which quickly circulated in the market. They believe that there is no need to worry about a demand decline at present, as the supply gap is structural, especially in high-capacity data center-level products. Prior to this, driven by global AI data center construction demand, the stock had surged nearly 200% over the past year, making Kamen Rider one of the best-performing major stocks this year. Due to a large amount of buy orders, the company's stock price was unable to match transactions on Monday, and a 16% daily price limit was imposed. As of Monday, Kamen Rider's average target price had risen by about 44%, reaching 63,843 yen (402 US dollars) from slightly over 44,000 yen the day before the financial report announcement. This marks the largest post-financial report increase among companies listed in the Nikkei 225 stock index, with a rise of over 40% from Friday's closing price. After the Nikkei index components announced their financial reports, Kamen Rider saw the largest increase in its stock price. This company, formerly part of Toshiba's chip business, has historically focused on NAND flash memory, a fast storage technology that has replaced traditional hard drives in all devices from laptops to large data centers. Although its South Korean competitors also produce DRAM memory that performs similar functions, they have recently allocated more resources to high-bandwidth memory (HBM), allowing Kamen Rider to take on more orders in the NAND market. NAND pricing power returns Amidst the current emphasis on "storage" as a strategic resource in AI data center construction, Japan's NAND industry leader, Kamen Rider, with a financial report far exceeding expectations, has drawn market attention back to an old topic: supply discipline + structural demand = pricing power recovery. It is precisely because of this that foreign investment banks and securities firms have collectively raised their target prices in a short window, forming a rare "convergent resonance". The key points disclosed by Kamen Rider's latest financial report can be summarized in one sentence: profits are not just rebounding, but entering a new league -- the company revealed after the financial report that it expects an operating profit of approximately 1.3 trillion yen (about 8.2 billion US dollars) for the quarter ending in June, surpassing even its record levels in the previous fiscal year; management also described NAND pricing and supply-demand in a more "hard" manner: NAND prices had more than doubled in the March quarter, and with tight supply, prices could continue to rise, mentioning discussions with some large AI data center customers on long-term supply contracts for 2027-2028. Combining Kamen Rider's financial report with Bank of America Merrill Lynch's industry tracking data, the strength of current NAND prices has exceeded the forecasts of most institutions: The contract price of NAND (512Gb wafer) is currently around $25, about 10 times higher than its bottom in February 2025 of $2.5; NAND spot prices have risen by over 50% since the beginning of the year, about 8 times higher than the low point in February 2025 ($2.4); The price of client SSDs (for PCs) doubled in April compared to the end of 2025, with a full-year increase of about 35%-40% in 2025. Kamen Rider's strong performance is not an isolated case, as downstream data in the industry chain is cross-validating this super cycle. According to Bank of America's data, Taiwanese NAND module manufacturer Quanlian Electronics delivered "super cycle-level" performance in April: sales surged by 237% year-on-year, pre-tax profit margin reached 45%, and net profit margin reached 38%. Facing Kamen Rider's guidance and Quanlian's data, Bank of America admits that there is a high upward risk in current market forecasts for global NAND ASP.