Samsung has already sold 80% of its 2027 memory output under long-term agreements, according to Korean investment firm KB Securities, and the firm expects another double-digit quarterly price increase in consumer RAM after the new year.
The breakdown matters. For commodity memory such as DRAM and NAND, 70% of output is covered by five-year contracts. High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), the stacked chips used in graphics cards and data center accelerators, is covered at 100% by yearly agreements. KB Securities predicts the average selling price of HBM will rise 100% to 150% year over year. Hyperscalers, the giant cloud companies building out AI data centers, will likely compete for the remaining 20%.
That structure explains why relief looks distant. Yearly HBM deals reset prices every 12 months, so any increase lands quickly. Five-year commodity deals pull most standard memory out of open negotiation, which leaves PC and phone makers, and ultimately shoppers, drawing on a smaller pool of uncommitted supply. Samsung is one supplier, but the same dynamic is what the current shortage looks like from the buyer's side.
KB Securities also forecast a 57% year-over-year rise in Samsung's operating profit in 2027. It called earnings growth "virtually assured" because output is reserved and prices are rising.
The forecast follows a recent AI and semiconductor stock sell-off in which Samsung's shares fell 19%. KB Securities attributed the drop to weaker sentiment on AI investment and valuation adjustments amid macro uncertainty, not to any weakening in earnings fundamentals. Read together, the two stories pull in opposite directions: markets are nervous about AI spending, while contracts signed years ahead mean Samsung's revenue does not depend on that mood. One big tech CEO has said the shortage cannot last until 2030, but that still leaves several years of tight supply to get through first.