Tracking the concept of Hong Kong stocks | The trend of rising prices for storage chips continues, and the shortage situation may last at least until 2028 (with concept stocks attached)

According to ComputerBase's price tracking data for the three major storage categories of memory, HDD, and SSD, the current storage shortage crisis is far from over. In mid-June, HDD prices saw a significant increase, while memory and SSD prices are also rising. The latest data shows that memory prices are still at extremely high levels, with a slight increase compared to the previous month. Compared to September 2025, the average price of DDR5 memory has increased by 288%, further expanding from the previous 282% increase. The increase in HDD prices is even more astonishing, with the average price rising by 88% compared to the baseline last month, and surpassing the 100% mark this month, reaching 107%. SSD is the only category among the three major categories that has remained relatively stable this month, but the absolute increase is still significant. The average price of a 1TB NVMe SSD has increased by 112% compared to the baseline. For example, the Kingston NV3 1TB was priced at around 50 euros in September 2025, but now it is close to 140 euros. The increases for the 2TB and 4TB high-end models are relatively moderate, but still much higher than before the crisis. Analysts believe that the core of this round of HDD price increases comes from two main factors: the surge in procurement volume of large capacity hard drives by AI data centers, and the shift of massive cold data storage demand from SSD to high-performance HDD due to their better cost-effectiveness. Additionally, major manufacturers have actively reduced production capacity, leading to a continuous widening gap between supply and demand, squeezing the supply of consumer goods. In its latest report, financial firm Aletheia Capital significantly raised its price expectations for DRAM and HBM memory. The institution believes that memory is becoming the most critical component in AI hardware systems, and its overall value share is expected to increase from about 40% in 2025 to over 70% in 2027. Aletheia predicts that the average selling price of DRAM will increase by 30% in the third quarter of 2026, much higher than the previous estimate of 10% to 15%. They also predict another increase of 10% to 15% in the fourth quarter, consistent with previous forecasts. Aletheia also expects that the average selling price of HBM could double every year until 2027, as the exponential growth in demand for HBM by AI is outpacing the expansion speed of the three major original manufacturers compared to NVIDIA and other manufacturers' order growth. Data shows that the annual demand growth rate for global DRAM and NAND over the past two years has been as high as 45% and 38%, respectively, while the overall industry capacity supply growth rate has been maintained at only 16% to 17%, resulting in a continuous widening gap between supply and demand in the industry. At the same time, top cloud service providers such as Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Alibaba Cloud, both domestically and internationally, have signed 3-5 year long-term supply contracts to ensure the stable implementation of their computing operations, by prepaying security deposits to lock in production capacity and supply prices. This large-scale long-term locking of goods contracts has significantly reduced the circulation of spot market supply sources, further exacerbating the tight supply situation in the end market. In terms of new production capacity, the industry's core new production lines, represented by Micron's ID1 new factory, can only start production in the middle of 2027 at the earliest, and it takes 12-18 months for a semiconductor production line to ramp up and achieve stable production, so full-scale production and large-scale supply can only be achieved by 2028. For the storage industry, the most certain super-boom cycle has arrived. Goldman Sachs points out that the global supply-demand gap for DRAM in 2026-2028 is expected to be 5.0%, 5.9%, and 3.9%, respectively; for NAND flash, the supply-demand gaps in 2026 and 2027 are expected to be 4.4% and 4.6%, and then slightly narrow to 3.0% in 2028; the shortage of HBM high-bandwidth memory is the most pronounced, with gaps of 5.4%, 6.0%, and 4.3%, respectively. Overall, 2027 is likely to be the most acute year of supply and demand contradictions in the storage industry. Morgan Stanley recently released a research report stating that due to the continuous growth in demand from AI data centers, the entire HDD and storage industry chain is facing a level of tightness beyond expectations. The shortage situation is expected to last at least until 2028, breaking the previous expectation of alleviation by 2027. On the demand side, the amount of AI server DRAM per unit is 8-10 times that of a regular server, and the amount of NAND and enterprise hard drives is over 3 times. The large-scale deployment of large models for inference and AI agents will drive explosive growth in storage demand. Related concept stocks: Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (00981): The core products of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation cover multiple areas, including logic chips, storage chips, and analog chips. In the first quarter, sales revenue was $25.055 billion, an increase of 11.5% year-on-year; net profit was about $197 million, an increase of 5% year-on-year. In the second quarter, the company's revenue guidance is a sequential increase of 14% to 16%, and gross margin guidance is 20%-22%. HUA HONG GRACE (01347): Hua Hong's storage business is divided into two main lines: embedded non-volatile storage eNVM (the basic plate, with the highest revenue share) and independent NOR Flash (the second high-growth curve). In the first quarter, sales revenue reached $660.9 million, an increase of 22.2% year-on-year; net profit was $20.9 million, an increase of 458.1% year-on-year and 19.9% sequentially. GigaDevice Semiconductor Inc. (03986): GigaDevice Semiconductor Inc. is a leading NOR flash design enterprise in China, with the second largest market share globally. The company actively lays out a diversified product matrix, covering NOR Flash, SLC NAND Flash, niche DRAM, MCU, analog chips, and sensor chips. Central China believes that the company is a leading company in China for niche memory and MCU, with a continuous upward trend in memory cycles. The company's niche DRAM, SLC NAND, and NOR Flash products have seen increases in both volume and price, and the company is actively expanding custom storage, making progress in various customer areas, expected to contribute revenue in 2026. Montage Technology (06809): Montage Technology, as a leader in the memory interconnect chip market, is transitioning from a memory interconnect leader to a platform-type interconnect chip company. With the background of the AI era, with its long-term focus in the crucial high-speed interconnect chip field between computing power and storage, the company has developed a rich product matrix and occupies a leading position in the global market. The PCle Retimer product has entered the volume stage, and the company is extending along the same path to the higher value and volume PCle Switch field, expected to open up new growth opportunities. As AI transitions from model training to inference, especially the development of AI agents, the demand for server CPUs is increasing, and the company is a major beneficiary of this strong demand for CPUs.