By Adam Clark

Samsung Electronics got a boost Thursday following a report about surging prices for its cutting-edge memory chips. That should be good news for Samsung's U.S. peer Micron Technology, but its shares were falling in early trading.

The likely explanation lies in a divergence between the American and South Korean markets, as well as Samsung and Micron's stock in recent years.

Samsung rose 4.9% in trading in Seoul. That was partly because of catch-up trading following a three-day holiday in South Korea, but also boosting the stock was a report from the Chosun Daily. The newspaper said that Samsung is aiming to price its latest high-bandwidth memory product, HBM4, 20%-30% higher than the previous HBM3E model.

Samsung didn't respond to a request for comment.

Micron is the chief rival of Samsung and SK Hynix in making HBM chips, which are crucial for the latest artificial-intelligence processors from the likes of Nvidia. SK Hynix rose 1.6% on Thursday.

Micron executives have said the company is carrying out volume production and commercial shipments of its own HBM4 product this quarter. Micron is likely to be able to raise prices as much as Samsung can; it has said all its HBM4 capacity is already sold out for 2026.

So why isn't Micron getting a boost? The likeliest explanation is a broader divergence between U.S. and South Korean markets. South Korea's KOSPI Composite Index has risen 35% so far this year and reached a record high on Thursday, in large part driven by Samsung and SK Hynix's gains. In contrast, the S&P 500 is up 0.4%.

The memory-chip sector is increasingly driven by retail trading and Korean investors just feel better about the market overall.

Additionally, investors might feel Samsung has a little more room to run. The stock has more than tripled in the past year, but still lags behind Micron and SK Hynix, which have more than quadrupled over the same period.

Samsung was penalized for being relatively slow in getting its HBM3 product up to the standards required by Nvidia, so it lost market share to its rivals. Now it appears to be catching up.

But Micron investors sitting on huge gains shouldn't stress too much. With no end to the memory-chip shortage in sight, there is plenty of revenue to go around.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com

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February 19, 2026 10:47 ET (15:47 GMT)

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