Recently, Toshiba announced a plan to expand production capacity, aiming to increase the output of mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs), especially nearline drives for data center applications. The news triggered a sharp reaction in the market, causing STX and WDC’s stock prices to drop significantly, and casting a layer of negative sentiment over various storage-related stocks.
In response to this development, we can rationally assess the situation from the perspective of how easy or difficult it is to expand capacity within the industry. Among different types of storage products, increasing DRAM production capacity is the most challenging, followed by NAND, while expanding HDD production is relatively the easiest. Once you understand this basic logic, it becomes clear that for MU, which is centered on DRAM and NAND, its storage business is actually only very minimally affected in any tangible way by this event.
In addition, you can also refer to the company’s latest financial report released on Thursday. The report provides clear guidance, stating that during 2027 and 2028, the year-over-year growth rate of the industry’s total DRAM bit shipments is expected to remain in the low-20% range. This data clearly indicates that, moving forward, the industry’s overall pace of capacity expansion will still remain relatively restrained.
In response to this development, we can rationally assess the situation from the perspective of how easy or difficult it is to expand capacity within the industry. Among different types of storage products, increasing DRAM production capacity is the most challenging, followed by NAND, while expanding HDD production is relatively the easiest. Once you understand this basic logic, it becomes clear that for MU, which is centered on DRAM and NAND, its storage business is actually only very minimally affected in any tangible way by this event.
In addition, you can also refer to the company’s latest financial report released on Thursday. The report provides clear guidance, stating that during 2027 and 2028, the year-over-year growth rate of the industry’s total DRAM bit shipments is expected to remain in the low-20% range. This data clearly indicates that, moving forward, the industry’s overall pace of capacity expansion will still remain relatively restrained.