The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at hwdoh@nhqv.com. -- Ed. Hyperscalers are expected to resume their data center investment from 4Q20. Smartphone makers are to continue accumulating inventory in 4Q20. And, consumers are giving warm responses to recently annou
Lotte Hotel opened Lotte Hotel Seattle in downtown Seattle on Sept. 24 (local time). It is Lotte Hotel's 12th overseas hotel and third in the United States, with the other two in New York and Guam.Lotte Hotel opened its first overseas hotel, Lotte Hotel Moscow, in Russia in 2010. It now operates
SK hynix Inc. announced on Sept. 22 that it has founded Gauss Labs Inc. to lead manufacturing innovation through industrial artificial intelligence (AI) solutions.Gauss Labs will start its Korean office later this month right after having established its headquarters in Silicon Valley, U.S. last mon
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at hwdoh@nhqv.com. -- Ed. Affected by slowed demand, domestic chipmakers have revised their capacity addition plans for 2H20, a development which in turn should affect earnings at front-end semicon equipment makers. That said,
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at hwdoh@nhqv.com. -- Ed. While memory prices, particularly for server DRAM, are likely to slide in 2H20, memory market conditions should improve in 1Q21, a prediction which is backed up by the recent rebound in DRAM spot pric
Tesla shares plunged 21.06 percent to US$330.21 and its market cap plummeted by approximately 100 trillion won on Sept. 8. Under the circumstances, South Korean Tesla shareholders lost about one trillion won. Their purchase amounted to 583 billion won for the four days preceding the plunge.The stock
Kakao will invest 400 billion won to build a data center and make a foray into the cloud industry in earnest.Kakao plans to compete with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft not only in the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) sector, which is dominated by global players, but in the software as a service
KakaoPage, Korea’s leading story entertainment company, will expand into the U.S., China, and Southeast Asia through continued investments and M&A deals and establish a truly global network by 2022, the company's CEO Lee Jin-soo said.Lee disclosed the plan at APOS 2020, a forum for sharing the l
The Korea Securities Depository announced on Sept. 3 that South Korean individual investors’ monthly net foreign stock purchase dropped from US$3,191 million to US$1,728 million last month.The U.S. stock purchase dropped 34.4 percent from over US$2.27 billion to US$1.49 billion. Still, the net purch
SK Networks is ramping up investments in innovative areas to secure future growth engines.The company is expanding its investment portfolio through participation in global funds in Silicon Valley. It is also seeking to discover growth engines based on networks with leading global technology companie
The author is an analyst of KB Securities. He can be reached at jeff.kim@kbfg.com. -- Ed. Maintain target price at KRW105,000; inventory to normalize in 4Q20 We maintain BUY and our 12m TP of KRW105,000 (12m fwd BVPS x 1.43x target P/B) on SK hynix. Our TP remains unchanged because the inventory bur
The author is an analyst of KB Securities. He can be reached at jeff.kim@kbfg.com. -- Ed. KOSPI +61.5% vs. SEC +30.4%, SK hynix +12.8%As of August 28, shares of SEC/SK hynix were up 30.4%/12.8% from their March troughs, significantly underperforming the KOSPI’s rally of 61.5% during the same period.
The author is an analyst of KB Securities. He can be reached at jeff.kim@kbfg.com. -- Ed. Server DRAM contract prices fall 4.5% in August but within expectationsAccording to DRAMeXchange (Aug 31), the contract price for server DRAM (32 GB) fell 4.5% MoM in August, with that of PC DRAM (DDR4 8 GB) an
The author is an analyst of KB Securities. He can be reached at jeff.kim@kbfg.com. -- Ed. DRAM spot price rebound: Increase in rush orders from Huawei, CXMT production problemsAccording to DRAMeXchange (Aug 27), the PC DRAM (DDR4 8Gb) spot price rebounded 1-2% after diving 30% from a peak in early A
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at hwdoh@nhqv.com. -- Ed. Memory makers` 2021 investment plans are changing in a conservative direction in response to a recent (since 3Q20) drop in memory prices. Hyperscalers’ memory inventories are above normal levels. Capa
KT announced on Aug. 21 that it was selected as one of the 60 most sustainable global companies and one of the 20 excellent companies in responding to COVID-19 announced by the Association for Supporting the SDGs for the UN (ASD).The list was made by analyzing the most sustainable companies and bran
SK hynix Inc. announced on Aug. 18 the release of the world’s first 128-layer NAND Flash-based consumer SSD -- the SK hynix Gold P31.The new SSD is the company’s first consumer-facing PCIe SSD launched in the United States under the SK hynix brand.The Gold P31 is intended for all PC users with a par
Mirae Asset Management announced on Aug. 13 that net assets of Cloud Computing ETF, which was listed on the NASDAQ market by U.S. ETF operator Global X, have surpassed US$1 billion. Since listing in April 2019, the ETF’s net assets have steadily increased based on its excellent performances, includi
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. She can be reached at jy.lee@nhqv.com. -- Ed. Zinus’s 2Q20 results exceeded expectations thanks to strong growth overseas (including in Australia, Europe, and Canada) and sound furniture-related sales. We anticipate favorable 2H20 earnings, led
Korean companies have significantly narrowed their sales gaps with the global No. 1 players in their business fields over the past five years, a survey has found.CEO Score, a corporate evaluation website, has recently compared sales of Korea's No. 1 companies against global No. 1 companies in 19