Financial Association News on September 27 (Editor: Liu Rui) - This Thursday, the global semiconductor stocks ushered in a frenzy.

After the bell on Wednesday Eastern Time, Micron Technology released an impressive financial report, significantly boosting confidence in the global semiconductor market. At the same time, SK Hynix and Tokyo Electron also reported bullish news, driving up semiconductor stocks in the US, Japan, South Korea, and Europe markets.

In stark contrast to the continuous good news is a bearish report titled 'Winter is Coming' released by Morgan Stanley half a month ago. Morgan Stanley believes that the global memory chip industry is facing a 'winter is coming,' and the dilemma of HBM oversupply may soon unfold.

The global rally on Thursday also made investors doubt Morgan Stanley's judgment: Is winter really coming?

Global semiconductor stocks ignite a broad rally

After Wednesday's closing Eastern Time, Micron Technology released a strong financial report: not only did the fourth fiscal quarter revenue achieve the largest increase in over a decade, but the performance forecast for the next fiscal quarter also exceeded Wall Street's expectations.

It is worth mentioning that Micron also reaffirmed that its HBM chip products for 2024 and 2025 have been sold out.

After the financial report was released, Micron Technology's stock price surged on Thursday. As of Thursday's close, the company's stock price rose by 14.73%, indicating that this financial report brought investors a huge surprise.

Other US chip stocks also performed strongly on Thursday: AMD rose by 3.38%, Qualcomm rose by 2.61%, and Intel rose by 1.61%.

Chip stocks in other global markets also received a boost.

In the South Korean stock market, both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix saw an increase in stock prices on Thursday, with Samsung closing up by over 4% and SK Hynix up by over 9%.

For SK Hynix, there was another major bullish news on Thursday, as the company announced in the morning that it has successfully mass-produced the world's first 12-layer HBM3E memory chip product and plans to deliver it within the year, undoubtedly injecting another dose of excitement into its stock price.

In the Japanese stock market, Tokyo Electron Ltd. Unsponsored ADR saw a significant 8% increase in stock price at the close. It is worth noting that the company also had bullish news on Thursday: Tokyo Electron's CFO told Japanese media that the company expects its AI-related sales for the fiscal year to increase by approximately 15% to 690 billion Japanese yen (about 33.443 billion Chinese yuan).

Furthermore, in the Japanese stock market, the major shareholder of the chip design company Arm, SoftBank Group, also saw a stock price increase of over 4% on Thursday.

Global semiconductor leader Taiwan Semiconductor saw a 2.46% increase in stock on Thursday.

In the European market, Dutch semiconductor equipment giant ASML Holding's stock price also rose, closing up 4.19%. In addition, other stocks such as Be Semiconductor and STMicroelectronics also soared.

Did Morgan Stanley get slapped in the face?

What is interesting is that whether it is Micron's strong financial report or Tokyo Electron's optimistic outlook, it indicates that the current market demand for artificial intelligence chips remains strong.

However, less than half a month ago, Morgan Stanley just expressed a pessimistic view on the prospects of HBM chips.

On September 15, Morgan Stanley released a research report titled 'Winter Is Coming', warning that the artificial intelligence bubble could burst, expressing pessimism about the prospects of SK Hynix and Samsung. Morgan Stanley's bearish reasons are weak demand for general-purpose DRAM and an expected oversupply of AI-specific HBM chips.

Morgan Stanley also downgraded SK Hynix's rating to shareholding in the report, and simultaneously lowered the target prices of both SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics. This also led to a sharp drop of over 11% in SK Hynix's stock price on the first day of trading after the report was published, to the lowest level since February 8.

However, today's surge in global semiconductor stocks, including SK Hynix, seems to be a strong counterattack against Morgan Stanley's bearish stance.

Many analysts have raised objections.

In fact, after Morgan Stanley's bearish report was released, many industry analysts have raised objections.

Samsung Securities analyst Hwang Min-sung (音) stated that SK Hynix's HBM production capacity will increase from 0.13 million pieces per month at the end of this year to 0.15 million pieces by the end of 2025, and the company will only produce the amount covered by pre-signed contracts, which means it is unlikely to have an oversupply:

"If it is expected that there will be an oversupply of HBM, why would NVIDIA seek additional supply from Samsung Electronics?"

Nomura Securities stated that considering the possibility of production interruptions for some chip manufacturers, an actual oversupply "is unlikely to occur".

Korea Shin Young Securities expects global HBM demand and supply to reach 220 billion gigabytes (GB) and 190 billion GB respectively next year, indicating a continuous shortage of supply.

Shin Young Securities analyst Park Sang-wook stated: "Weak demand for general DRAM will be offset by strong HBM demand."