Memory (DRAM) Sector Monitor

01

What this tracks

The global DRAM/NAND oligopoly is effectively three names. The dashboard follows each one's adjusted P&L and balance sheet from FY2008 through the current quarter, then a two-year forecast (FY2026 and FY2027), and rolls them into sector aggregates. Because the memory cycle swings from loss-making troughs to record-profit peaks, the point of the monitor is to see where in the cycle the group is trading — cheap on trough earnings, or optically cheap on peak earnings.

02

The valuation lens

Each company block carries the same nine rows — Revenue, EBITDA, EBIT, Net Income, Market Cap, Shares Outstanding, Shareholders' Equity, ROE and P/Book. The four money rows are in US$ millions; ROE is a percent and P/Book a multiple. The three blocks sum into a sector aggregate that feeds three headline gauges.

03

The live recompute

The fundamentals are a Bloomberg-adjusted snapshot and change only when a fresh workbook is dropped in. What updates every run is current market cap, computed from the live close and the latest share count, then converted to US$. The two Korean names divide by the USD:KRW rate; Micron is already in dollars.

Market cap (US$ mn)
  Samsung   =  price_KRW (A9)   x  shares_mn (row 12, latest col)  /  USD:KRW (A5)
  SK Hynix  =  price_KRW (A19)  x  shares_mn (row 22, latest col)  /  USD:KRW (A5)
  Micron    =  price_USD (A29)  x  shares_mn (row 32, latest col)          (already US$)

Live closes land in the price cells A9 / A19 / A29 and the FX in A5; the new market cap is written into the FY2026 (AR) and FY2027 (AS) columns and flows through the workbook's own formulas to total market cap, forward PER, sector ROE, P/Book and the sensitivity table. Historical columns are never touched.

04

The two charts

Both charts run the same period axis — quarterly from 1Q2011 to 1Q2026, then the two full-year forecasts FY2026 and FY2027. The forecast pair sits in a shaded amber band labelled "Forecast" so the projected points are never mistaken for actuals.

• Sector Forward PER — a single line; the y-axis is fixed to -50 … +50 so cross-cycle spikes (a negative trough PER, a blow-off peak) don't flatten the readable range.
• Sector P/Book vs ROE — dual axis: P/Book (left) against ROE% (right), the classic "are you paying up for returns" pair. Through the cycle P/Book and ROE should track; a gap flags rich or cheap.

X-axis labels are rotated to 90° and all shown, so every quarter and both forecast years are legible.

05

2028 net-margin sensitivity

The lower table stress-tests where the sector could trade in 2028 across assumed net-margin outcomes (10% → 55%). Net profit scales off the FY2027 sector revenue base; the derived rows show what that implies for valuation at today's market cap.

Net profit (2028) =  FY2027 sector revenue  x  assumed net margin
PER @ mkt cap     =  current total market cap  /  net profit (2028)
ROE               =  net profit  /  average shareholders' equity (FY27 & FY28)
P/Book            =  current total market cap  /  book value

It answers: "if margins land at X, what PER and P/Book am I paying at the current price?"

06

Data sources

• Fundamentals — a Bloomberg-adjusted workbook (Memory.xlsx), the single source of the P&L, balance sheet and forecasts. Drop a new file in to refresh forecasts; the layout is read fresh each run.
• Share prices — yfinance primary, with Stooq then Naver Finance as fallbacks (Korea via Naver). A failed source carries the workbook's own price cell forward, so a flaky week never breaks a run.
• USD:KRW — yfinance (KRW=X) with a Stooq fallback; carries the sheet's A5 rate if both are down.

07

Publishing & automation

• Schedule — launchd job com.memory.weekly, Monday 06:00 SGT (RunAtLoad catches a missed slot; a same-day guard prevents a double-post).
• Hosting — Cloudflare Pages (chris-memory.pages.dev): index.html is the latest, each run also archived as memory-YYYY-MM-DD.html.
• Archive — the newest 25 runs are kept and indexed in archive.html, linked from every report; older pages age off automatically.
• Delivery — the report link posts to the Memory Discord channel via webhook.
• On demand — Telegram /memory DRAM runs it any time and replies with the link.

08

Caveats

• Forward market cap is held flat. The live cap is written into both FY2026 and FY2027, i.e. "at today's price" — it is a valuation lens, not a price forecast.
• Peak-earnings optics. A 3–4x forward PER at the top of the cycle is normal for memory and does not mean cheap; always cross-read P/Book and ROE.
• Mixed reporting currencies. Samsung and SK Hynix report in KRW and are converted at a single spot rate; a sharp FX move shifts the sector aggregate independently of operating performance.
• Forecasts are scenario numbers. FY2026/FY2027 reflect an aggressive up-cycle path in the workbook; they move whenever a new file is dropped in.
• Samsung is not pure memory. Its non-memory divisions dilute the read; the sector aggregate is a memory proxy, not a clean pure-play.
• Prices are daily closes. Intraday moves and after-hours are not captured; the Monday run reflects the last available close per source.

09

References

Bloomberg. Adjusted fundamentals — SALES_REV_TURN, EBITDA, EBIT, EARN_FOR_COMMON, HISTORICAL_MARKET_CAP, EQY_SH_OUT, TOTAL_EQUITY, RETURN_COM_EQY, PX_TO_BOOK_RATIO.

Company disclosure. Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron Technology quarterly results and investor materials.

Market data. Yahoo Finance (yfinance), Stooq and Naver Finance for closing prices and the USD:KRW rate.