Legacy memory price hikes are getting absolutely ridiculous — and that's exactly why the trade works.
SLC NAND up 120-170% in H2. High-capacity NOR up 90-110%. DDR3/DDR4 up 50% in Q3. DDR2 up 35-40%. LPDDR up 20%+. Even DDR1 and PSRAM are climbing.
These aren't isolated moves. They're stacking on top of H1 hikes that already pushed SLC NAND up 130-150%. So you're looking at cumulative gains of 406%-575% throughout 2026 for some categories.
Meanwhile, upstream wafer COGS — like $PSMC's +45% DRAM wafer pricing — are rising too, but nowhere near as fast as the end-product pricing power these fabless memory companies are capturing.
That spread is where the margin expansion happens.
Compare this to $NBIS reporting +17-21% GPU rental hikes or Taiyo-Murata MLCC price moves. Legacy memory is moving way harder, way faster, and with way less attention.
Q3 earnings for fabless legacy memory names should absolutely cook. The setup is there. The pricing power is there. The margin leverage is there.
This is the kind of asymmetric opportunity that gets ignored until it's too late.
SLC NAND up 120-170% in H2. High-capacity NOR up 90-110%. DDR3/DDR4 up 50% in Q3. DDR2 up 35-40%. LPDDR up 20%+. Even DDR1 and PSRAM are climbing.
These aren't isolated moves. They're stacking on top of H1 hikes that already pushed SLC NAND up 130-150%. So you're looking at cumulative gains of 406%-575% throughout 2026 for some categories.
Meanwhile, upstream wafer COGS — like $PSMC's +45% DRAM wafer pricing — are rising too, but nowhere near as fast as the end-product pricing power these fabless memory companies are capturing.
That spread is where the margin expansion happens.
Compare this to $NBIS reporting +17-21% GPU rental hikes or Taiyo-Murata MLCC price moves. Legacy memory is moving way harder, way faster, and with way less attention.
Q3 earnings for fabless legacy memory names should absolutely cook. The setup is there. The pricing power is there. The margin leverage is there.
This is the kind of asymmetric opportunity that gets ignored until it's too late.
