Earnings Hopes and the 'Nvidia Effect' Send Samsung and SK Hynix Soaring

[Financial News] Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have both set new all-time highs, buoyed by upward revisions to earnings forecasts and a tailwind from Nvidia. In particular, Samsung Electronics became the first Korean company ever to surpass a market capitalization of 1 trillion dollars.
According to the Korea Exchange (KRX) on the 27th, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix closed up 7.13% and 7.96%, respectively, the previous day. During the session, Samsung Electronics climbed to 219,000 won and SK Hynix to 1,099,000 won, both marking new record intraday highs.
Samsung Electronics’ market capitalization reached 1,290.4811 trillion won for common shares and 121.3354 trillion won for preferred shares, totaling 1,411.8165 trillion won. With this, it became the first domestic company to break through the 1 trillion dollar market-cap threshold. Globally, only 13 companies have ever exceeded a market capitalization of 1 trillion dollars.
As a result, Samsung Electronics has overtaken Walmart and Eli Lilly to rank 12th worldwide by market capitalization. In Asia, it now has the third-largest market cap after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) in sixth place and Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) in seventh.
SK Hynix’s market capitalization stood at 783.2599 trillion won, placing it 21st in the world.
The rally is seen as being driven by expectations for earnings amid the spread of artificial intelligence (AI), while Nvidia’s strong results helped to quell talk of an "AI bubble" and improved investor sentiment.
Rising memory semiconductor prices have fueled a series of projections that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix will post record earnings this year. Global investment bank Macquarie Group estimates Samsung Electronics’ operating profit for this year at 301.277 trillion won and SK Hynix’s at 272.269 trillion won. It set target share prices at 340,000 won for Samsung Electronics and 1.7 million won for SK Hynix.
On top of this, Nvidia’s earnings surprise added further momentum. On the 25th (local time), Nvidia announced that its revenue for the fourth quarter of its last fiscal year (November last year to January this year) came to 68.13 billion dollars, or about 97 trillion won. This exceeded the 66.2 billion dollar consensus compiled by market research firm London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).
Lee Kyung-min, a researcher at Daishin Securities, noted, "Nvidia’s earnings release reaffirmed explosive AI demand, easing concerns about overinvestment," adding, "Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive officer (CEO), stressed in response to market worries about overinvestment that future software will shift to an AI token-based model, and that companies’ revenue will be proportional to the volume of AI tokens generated and computing power."
Han Dong-hee, a researcher at SK Securities, explained, "As AI has begun to utilize not only existing high-bandwidth memory (HBM) but the full range of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and NAND flash memory, the memory industry is in a completely different situation from the past," and analyzed, "As the status of memory has risen, supply shortages are deepening."

jisseo@fnnews.com Reporter Seo Min-ji Reporter