A lot of people must be wishing they had their hands on that switch somewhere in Korea that can turn off the power at Samsung’s memory factories. Since the recent power outage at a memory plant in Kiheung, prices of memories have gone up, quite sharply in the case of NAND flash, and the memory manufacturers’ shares have also gone up.
The DXI index compiled by DRAMexchange, which integrates spot prices for memories with the share prices of their manufacturers, shows a nice upward trend since the outage.
The NAND price is said to have soared 20 per cent since the event at Kiheung, while DRAM prices which had been falling all year, with unit volumes rising 23 per cent in Q2 for overall revenue decline of 24 per cent, have showed a marked stiffening since the electricity went off at Kiheung.
When you think that Samsung saw profits dive 47 per cent in Q2, and Carl Icahn, the US corporate raider, was reported to be preparing a private equity-style move on the company, the outage, and its subsequent effects, seem all very fortuitous.
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