The share price of Micron Technology rose 2.4% in late trading on Monday, following public comments from SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won suggesting the current high prices for memory chips, driven by artificial intelligence demand, may be difficult to sustain long-term. The market interpreted these remarks as a sobering warning about short-term overheating risks in the sector, which paradoxically boosted overall sentiment for semiconductor stocks, further lifting Micron's share price from recent lows. Concurrently, shares of SK hynix saw a slight decline of approximately 0.1%.

Speaking at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Jeju Forum, Chey Tae-won noted that current memory chip prices are "abnormally high." He warned that if this situation persists, it could not only trigger "chipflation," burdening downstream equipment manufacturers, but also attract new competitors and potentially provoke geopolitical countermeasures. He emphasized that "prices must normalize," otherwise the market could shrink while competitors flood in.

This cautionary stance presents a stark contrast to the supply-demand challenges SK hynix itself faces. The company's CEO, Kwak Noh-jung, previously stated that 2027 is expected to be the year of the tightest supply in the industry's history, with customer demand persistently exceeding production capacity, potentially continuing beyond 2030. Chey Tae-won also revealed that major customers have requested AI memory supply volumes for 2027 to be 60% to 100% higher than this year's levels.

Analysts point out that these comments precisely explain the logic behind Micron's stock rebound—the fundamental backdrop of long-term supply tightness remains unchanged, while expectations for a short-term price correction have already been priced in by the market. Currently, SK hynix dominates the high-bandwidth memory market with a 58% share, while Micron and Samsung each hold about 21%. All three giants have announced multi-billion-dollar capacity expansion plans, but new production lines will take at least three to five years to come online. Given that HBM production consumes about three times the wafer capacity of standard DRAM, the structural imbalance of demand outstripping supply is expected to persist.