Goldman Sachs raises HBM forecast again: doubling every year for the next three years

Against the backdrop of a shortage of high-performance storage chips, Goldman Sachs has raised its HBM market forecast twice in just two months.

On Monday local time, analysts at Goldman Sachs, including Giuni Lee, released a report forecasting that the global HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) market size will grow at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 100% between 2023 and 2026, reaching $30 billion in 2026, an increase of over 30% from the March forecast.

Goldman Sachs pointed out that global AI-related investments are strong and expected to drive HBM demand growth. Additionally, as HBM technology advances rapidly, the capacity of HBM used in each AI chip will increase, boosting demand. Goldman Sachs also reiterated its view that the demand for HBM will outstrip supply in the coming years.

Strong AI investment and revenue are expected to drive accelerated expansion of HBM

The main reasons for Goldman Sachs' upward revision of the HBM market forecast can be summarized as follows:

Stronger AI-related revenue prospects in the HBM supply chain.

On the supply side, Goldman Sachs raised SK Hynix's HBM revenue forecast for this year from $7.5 billion to $9 billion and Samsung's HBM revenue forecast from $4.8 billion to $5.2 billion.

On the demand side, Goldman Sachs expects NVIDIA's data center computing revenue to continue to grow. The growth rates of data center computing revenue for 2024, 2025, and 2026 were revised from the previous 112%, 31%, 8% to 142%, 39%, 18%, respectively.

In addition, TSMC's management expects AI revenue to more than double this year, with a projected compound annual growth rate of 50% by 2028.

Accelerated HBM technology roadmap leads to increased HBM capacity in chips. For example, Samsung and SK Hynix have successively announced the start of mass production of 12-layer stacked HBM3E, with the latter advancing its HBM4 mass production plan from 2026 to 2025.

The increase in the proportion of advanced HBM3E implies an increase in demand for high-end HBM in the market, while tight supply also drives up the overall price of the HBM market.

According to Goldman Sachs' survey, HBM3E carries at least a 10-20% premium over HBM3. Therefore, Goldman Sachs has correspondingly raised its forecast for the average selling price of the HBM market, expecting year-on-year growth in average selling prices in 2024 and 2025 (compared to the previous forecast of a gradual decline in average selling prices in these two years).

Furthermore, major U.S. hyperscale cloud providers have previously stated that despite high levels of AI-related capital expenditure in 2024, there is still expected growth in 2025. Based on this, Goldman Sachs forecasts that the growth rates of AI-related capital expenditure in 2024 and 2025 will be 46% and 11%, respectively (compared to the previous forecasts of 26% and 5%). With the expected increase in cloud capital expenditure, the demand for HBM, as one of the main application areas, will also increase accordingly.

Based on these factors, Goldman Sachs has raised its total available market size forecasts for HBM in 2024, 2025, and 2026 by 16%, 24%, and 31% respectively, to $15 billion, $23 billion, and $30 billion.

Goldman Sachs reiterated its view that there will be a supply shortage of HBM in the coming years, stating that the increase in demand forecasts exceeded their slight adjustments to HBM capacity and yield estimates.

According to Goldman Sachs' latest supply and demand analysis, the supply gap in the HBM market in 2024, 2025, and 2026 will reach 2.7%, 1.9%, and 0.9% respectively, higher than the previous forecasts of 2.0%, 1.0%, and 0.7%.

Micron Technology Maintains Leadership, Micron with Fastest Growth?

Goldman Sachs maintains its overall position on the global HBM competitive landscape:

SK Hynix: Goldman Sachs believes that SK Hynix will maintain its dominant position in HBM3 and HBM3E in the next 2-3 years, maintaining over 50% of the overall HBM market share.

Goldman Sachs has raised its estimates for SK Hynix's HBM revenue for 2024-2026 and expects HBM revenue and profits to account for a significant proportion of SK Hynix's total revenue and profits.

Due to SK Hynix's successful progress in improving product yield and supplying the latest generation of HBM to major customers, Goldman Sachs has raised its target price from KRW 225,000 to KRW 255,000, maintaining a buy rating.

Samsung: Goldman Sachs expects Samsung to maintain the largest market share in traditional HBM products (mainly HBM2E) and gradually gain share in HBM3/HBM3E.

Although Samsung's HBM gross margin may be lower than SK Hynix's, Goldman Sachs still expects the HBM business to improve Samsung's overall profit margin.

Goldman Sachs has slightly raised Samsung's profit expectations, but due to higher DRAM prices that may affect its profit margins in smartphones and consumer electronics businesses, the overall adjustment is limited. Goldman Sachs maintains a target price of KRW 103,000 for Samsung and reiterates a buy rating.

Micron Technology: Goldman Sachs expects Micron's overall HBM revenue growth to exceed that of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix starting in 2025, achieving the largest market share growth (although from a low base).

Micron plans to increase capital expenditure to seize the HBM market opportunity and expects its HBM business to grow from hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2024 fiscal year to tens of billions of dollars in the 2025 fiscal year.

Micron's 8-layer stacked HBM3E has a 30% energy efficiency advantage over its peers, and is currently supplying to NVIDIA, which Goldman Sachs sees as positive signals. Goldman Sachs expects that Micron's transition from the current 1-beta process node to the 1-gamma node will be key to reducing HBM costs