Lead Analysis
Huawei's Profit Slide Widens to 36% as Memory Costs Squeeze Its Device Business
Huawei's net profit for the first half of 2026 fell 36% year-over-year to 23.81 billion yuan ($3.54 billion), even as revenue rose 9.6% to 467.82 billion yuan, per Bloomberg, citing the company's interim results. The decline accelerated from a 32% profit drop over the same period a year earlier. Huawei said all of its business units posted year-over-year revenue growth without giving a segment breakdown, but rising memory chip prices weighed on profitability at its consumer division, which includes smartphones, while R&D spending climbed 25% to 121.38 billion yuan — 25.9% of revenue — as the company pushes deeper into chip self-sufficiency and AI computing following years of US export restrictions, per Aroged.
"Considering the memory price hike, it is impossible to manufacture smartphones below US$100 at the moment … [or] in the near future." — Jusy Hong, Senior Research Manager, Omdia, via the South China Morning PostHuawei's device unit sits at the sharp end of a cost shock rippling through the entire smartphone industry: Omdia has forecast that global average selling prices will climb to $565 in 2026, a 21% jump, as memory costs force vendors to prioritize value over volume — pressure that falls hardest on a China-focused seller like Huawei, competing largely on home turf against Apple and local rivals. For portfolio managers, Monday's results are a reminder that the memory-pricing cycle squeezing Nvidia's gross margin and reshaping SK Hynix's capacity plans is not confined to AI infrastructure: it is now showing up in the earnings of a company that sells phones, not GPUs, underscoring how far upstream the current shortage's effects are being felt.
Markets
Daily Top-10 Movers
Prices are Friday, August 28, 2026 closes at 4:00 PM EDT. Ranked by absolute price change among semiconductor stocks with market cap ≥$5B.
★ highlighted = today's news-driven movers. Friday's broad decline coincided with a hawkish Jackson Hole speech from Fed Chair Kevin Warsh; see Policy & Geopolitics below.
Companies & Financials
AMD's Server Momentum Builds as Qualcomm's Apple Wind-Down Bites
- AMD's data-center revenue surpassed Intel's for the first time in the first quarter of 2026, and Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold reiterated a bullish view this week, saying AMD offers "the strongest combination of direct earnings leverage, datacenter positioning and market-share gains" and should overtake Intel in server CPUs during 2027, per Benzinga. Why it matters: AMD now holds roughly 34.5% server CPU share, and the agentic-AI wave reshaping demand for x86 servers is turning what was an Nvidia-adjacent side story into a genuine two-horse race, with Microsoft set to deploy AMD's Helios AI rack across Azure in the second half of the year.
- Qualcomm shares traded near $165 heading into the week, still well off their highs as Apple's modem wind-down accelerates — Qualcomm expects to supply modems for only about 20% of iPhones in 2026 and none at all by 2027, per Ad Hoc News. Why it matters: management is counting on non-handset revenue growth accelerating from 24% in fiscal 2026 to more than 60% in fiscal 2027 to offset the lost Apple business, but that replacement remains a forecast while the modem revenue step-down is already locked in.
Memory Desk
SK Hynix's Export Prices Break $70 as Samsung's HBM4 Gains Split Analyst Views
- HBM export prices topped $70 per unit for the first time in July, rising 9.5% to $76.13, as Samsung Electronics and SK hynix signed a series of long-term supply agreements with major tech customers, even as shipment volumes fell 27.3%, per Seoul Economic Daily, citing the Korea International Trade Association. Why it matters: SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said the same day that SK hynix is weighing a joint-venture chip plant in Japan to add capacity, and KITA researcher Do Won-bin said "production capacity cannot be increased quickly, so unit prices have no choice but to rise for the time being" — a supply-constrained read that argues against a near-term price plateau.
- Samsung's estimated share of HBM4 shipments rose to about 35% in the second quarter from about 5% in the first, with blended yield improving more than 5 percentage points, prompting LS Securities to raise its Samsung price target 12.5% while cutting SK hynix's by 27.3%, per Seoul Economic Daily. Why it matters: LS Securities analyst Jung Woo-sung said the cut "does not mean growth in the HBM market is slowing … it is a process of the competitive structure among suppliers normalizing," though the brokerage also lowered its estimate of SK hynix's HBM operating margin next year to about 60% from about 80%, given how much more of SK hynix's valuation rests on HBM profitability than Samsung's.
Supply Chain, Equipment & Fabs
Intel Pushes EMIB-T Packaging Payoff to 2029 as Taiwan Looks Past TSMC
- Intel's advanced packaging revenue, led by its EMIB-T technology, is now expected to ramp in the second half of 2027, become a steady contributor in 2028 and hit its stride only in 2029, while the company ruled out a return to DRAM manufacturing, per TrendForce. Why it matters: CFO David Zinsner's timeline pushes Intel's packaging payoff further out than some investors had modeled, even as CEO Lip-Bu Tan says customers including Amazon, Cisco, SpaceX and Tesla are willing to help prepay Taiwanese and Japanese suppliers to secure the substrate capacity EMIB-T needs.
- Taiwan Stock Exchange chairman Sherman Lin argued investors should look past TSMC to the island's broader chip ecosystem, saying "our real competitive advantage is not that we have one or two world-class companies — it's that we have the world's most complete and competitive AI ecosystem," per Fortune. Why it matters: TSMC still accounts for roughly two-fifths of the value of Taiwan's stock market, but Acadian Asset Management's Ram Thirukkonda notes TSMC "sits on top of a much broader Taiwanese AI-picks-and-shovels supply chain" of hundreds of smaller investable names, several of which have outperformed TSMC itself over the past three years.
Policy & Geopolitics
India Opens a $13.4 Billion Chip-Design Fund as Fed Hawkishness Hits Chip Stocks
- India will offer fresh design-linked subsidies to chip startups from its new $13.4 billion semiconductor fund under the newly notified Semicon 2.0 scheme, with small design firms eligible for seed funding of up to 50% of project costs, capped at 150 million rupees ($1.6 million), per Bloomberg. Why it matters: the ₹1.27 trillion scheme extends beyond fabrication into design, packaging, equipment and talent development, an explicit bet that India can build a chip-design ecosystem rather than only chase fab investment the way most national semiconductor strategies have to date.
- US chip stocks tumbled Friday after Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh delivered a more hawkish-than-expected Jackson Hole keynote, pushing September rate-hike odds to 57.5% from 35.4% and sending Nvidia down 4.57%, AMD down 2.33% and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index down 3.47%, per Seoul Economic Daily. Why it matters: Mirae Asset Securities' Suh Sang-young said the selloff combined rate-driven profit-taking with renewed concern over US chip export restrictions and rising commodity DRAM supply from China's ChangXin Memory — a reminder that monetary policy and export-control policy are now moving chip stocks through the same channel.
Analyst Corner
Bank of America Sees DRAM Revenue Up 80% in 2027 as UBS's HBM Share Call Ages Well
- Bank of America (via Seoul Economic Daily, August 31): the bank said global DRAM revenue growth could exceed 80% in 2027 if AI-driven demand continues alongside limited supply increases, noting Samsung and SK hynix are both directing new capacity toward HBM while staying conservative on commodity DRAM and NAND.
- UBS (via Seoul Economic Daily, August 31): a month-old UBS forecast — that SK hynix would hold 48% of HBM bit shipments this year before Samsung edges ahead next year at 41% to 39% — is now the read Korean brokerages are trading around, with LS Securities citing the shift to justify cutting its SK hynix target 27.3% this week.
Calendar / Week Ahead
Dell Opens September as Broadcom's AI Guidance Looms Two Days Later
- Tuesday, Sept. 1 — Dell Technologies reports fiscal second-quarter results, with consensus revenue near $44.51 billion and EPS of $4.92, per Alphastreet.
- Wednesday, Sept. 2 — Broadcom reports fiscal third-quarter results, with consensus revenue near $29.44 billion and EPS of $3.16, up an estimated 87% year-over-year, per MarketScreener.
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