Shaking up Rankings

Over the past five years, changes have been made in the market capitalization standings among semiconductor giants. Samsung Electronics and Intel, the top two semiconductor companies, recently slipped down through the rankings. Meanwhile, nonmemory companies such as Nvidia, TSMC, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) rose to the top.

Nvidia was the top global semiconductor company by market capitalization, standing at US$773.2 billion (about 100 trillion won) as of May 19, according to the Korea Exchange and the U.S. stock market. Nvidia’s market capitalization had come in at US$81.4 billion in 2018, ranking sixth among global semiconductor stocks at the time, but it took the top spot this time. It widened its gap with second-place TSMC of Taiwan (US$481 billion) by more than 60 percent.

On the other hand, Samsung Electronics, which was number one in market capitalization among chipmakers five years ago, only had a market capitalization of US$341.3 billion in the middle of May, ranking third behind Nvidia and TSMC. That represented an increase from its 2018 market capitalization (US$230.3 billion), but not nearly as much as Nvidia and TSMC.

Intel, the No. 2 ranker in 2018, fell to the No. 8 spot with US$124.8 billion. While most semiconductor companies saw their market capitalization climb over the past five years, that of Intel went down 41 percent.

SK hynix, which was ninth in the market capitalization standings five years ago, recently dropped to 17th place by posting a market capitalization of US$55.7 billion. Micron (US$74.6 billion) also slipped from 10th to 13th. As the unit prices of DRAM and NAND flash memory have fallen and customers continue to adjust their inventories due to the aftermath of an economic slowdown, the growth of memory companies’ stocks, a traditionally cyclical industry, has been stagnant compared to non-memory companies.

On the other hand, market capitalization of non-memory companies such as foundry and fabless companies surged. Most of the top market capitalization stocks are those of non-memory semiconductor companies including Broadcom (US$284.4 billion), AMD (US$170.4 billion), Texas Instruments (US$124.8 billion), and Qualcomm (US$117.9 billion). In particular, AMD’s market capitalization increased nine-fold over five years.

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