CXMT's profit rose just 1% to 4% on 15% to 20% more sales; SK hynix reports October 28
China's biggest DRAM maker earned almost nothing more on 15-20% more sales, and its supplier filed that price increases are shrinking. SK hynix's October 28 print decides whether that is a CXMT cost story or the memory cycle's first crack.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
ChangXin Memory Technologies+7.93% — ChangXin Memory Technologies, up 7.93 percent today, China's largest DRAM maker, filed a preliminary nine-month forecast on October 16, 2026: revenue of RMB 265.0–270.0 billion, up 726–742% from a year earlier, and net profit of RMB 131.0–132.5 billion against a RMB 5.28 billion loss in the same period of 2025 1. The boom is real. The question is whether it is still accelerating, and the arithmetic inside the filing says it is not.
The extra sales stopped paying
Subtract the reported first half (RMB 150.31 billion revenue, RMB 77.61 billion profit) and the implied third quarter is RMB 114.7–119.7 billion of revenue, up 15–20% from Q2, but only RMB 53.4–54.9 billion of profit, up 1.0–3.9% 1. Net margin slipped from about 53% in Q2 to about 46% in Q3 1.
Roughly RMB 15–20 billion of extra sales carried under RMB 2.1 billion of extra profit, about 4 to 10 fen per yuan against more than 50 in Q2 1. CXMT gave no reason 1. One day before the filing, Longsys, a major Chinese memory module maker and a DRAM buyer, said in its own forecast that DRAM and NAND price increases had "narrowed markedly" 1. A seller and a buyer filed the same message within 48 hours: the shortage is intact, but each quarter lifts prices less 1.
CXMT's Q3 revenue jumped, profit did not
- Revenue (RMB bn)
- Net profit (RMB bn)
- Estimate
Data
| Revenue (RMB bn) | Net profit (RMB bn) | |
|---|---|---|
| Q2 2026 | 99.5 | 52.8 |
| Q3 2026 (implied midpoint) (estimate) | 117.2 | 54.2 |
The bulls and the glut camp
Against that stand the shortage bulls. Dell CEO Michael Dell says the shortage of HBM (high-bandwidth memory, the stacked chips used beside AI GPUs) and ordinary DRAM is "gonna get worse" in 2027 and could persist up to four years, with $95 billion of back-ordered AI servers waiting on memory at Dell 5. Smartkarma, an independent equity research house, forecasts a record SK hynix quarter and calls the 28% October share fall a buy at 4.8x FY27 earnings 4.
Counterpoint puts CXMT at 10% of global DRAM revenue in Q2, up from 4% a year earlier, still behind Samsung's+0.47% — Samsung, up 0.47 percent today 38%, SK hynix's+3.73% — SK hynix, up 3.73 percent today 25% and Micron's+2.35% — Micron, up 2.35 percent today 24% 2.
CXMT reached 10% of global DRAM revenue, up from 4% a year earlier
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Samsung | 38% |
| SK hynix | 25% |
| Micron | 24% |
| CXMT | 10% |
Goldman Sachs−1.40% — Goldman Sachs, down 1.40 percent today cut its Kospi target 25% on October 25, saying current semiconductor valuations imply a 65% earnings decline in 2027, which it called overly pessimistic 6. CXMT's announcement of 4F² (its new DRAM cell design, which shrinks the memory cell about a third below today's standard) already cut Samsung 17.8% and SK hynix 24.3% in the week of October 12–16; Rosenblatt, a US brokerage, calls the cell a "paper tiger" 3.
The audit starts Tuesday
SK hynix reports October 28, Samsung and Sandisk−1.90% — Sandisk, down 1.90 percent today report October 29, CXMT's formal report is due by October 31 1. If their conventional DRAM and NAND pricing still rises at the old rates, CXMT's flat quarter is a cost story.
If the commentary echoes "narrowing," the fade is global, the glut case would rest on filings rather than anyone's forecast, and contracted floors like Sandisk's pricing guarantees become the template 1. That pricing lift is the same money our October 24 piece flagged as the funding source for SK hynix's US capacity build; whether it fades decides who pays for that fab 1.
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