Semiconductor Exports Surge in Early September, MLCC Also Signals Rising Demand
Exports for September 1-10 totaled about $35 billion, a record for that period. Of this, semiconductor exports came to $16.5 billion, up about 65% from $10 billion in the same period last year. Lee Kwangsoo said that annualizing this ten-day growth rate for the full month suggests September semiconductor exports could reach about $60 billion. By product, DRAM exports rose about 79% and HBM about 87% month-on-month, which he said confirms the rise in memory prices in the data.
News also emerged that Apple had renegotiated memory supply contracts ahead of its new product launch, prioritizing securing volume without a price cap, which was cited as further grounds for the memory price uptrend to continue for some time.
In the MLCC segment, export value in early September rose about 65% from the previous month. After Murata, Japan's industry leader, announced it would scale back low-margin product lines and redeploy capacity toward higher-margin products, Samwha Capacitor, Amotech, and Kocheon, which are positioned to absorb that volume, surged. Samwha Capacitor triggered volatility interruptions twice intraday and rose about 20%, Amotech hit its upper limit, and Kocheon jumped more than 8%. Samsung Electro-Mechanics, however, fell about 1% on concerns of losing market share, showing that stock-specific interpretations of the news diverged.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang identified cybersecurity as the next major application area for AI. Despite broad weakness in U.S. equities that day, security-related stocks such as CrowdStrike and Cloudflare saw only limited declines, while small- and mid-cap quantum security theme stocks in Korea surged.