Samsung Electronics, SK hynix rally on Nvidia's blowout earnings

Shares of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix surged Thursday after Nvidia posted earnings that beat market expectations, fueling optimism over demand for HBM and DRAM memory chips as AI data center growth accelerates.

At 9:42 a.m. Thursday, Samsung Electronics was trading at 266,000 won ($192), up 5,250 won, or 2.01 percent, from the previous session on the Korea Exchange. SK hynix rose 60,000 won, or 3.55 percent, to 1.74 million won.

The gains were driven by Nvidia's results, released in the early hours of Thursday. The chipmaker reported fiscal year 2027 second-quarter sales of $96.22 billion for the May–July period, a 106 percent increase from a year earlier. The figure surpassed the $92.27 billion consensus estimate compiled by the London Stock Exchange Group and others by roughly $4 billion.

Growth in the data center segment — a key gauge of AI demand — also continued. Data center sales reached $89 billion, topping the market estimate of $85.8 billion. Earnings per share came in at $2.22, up 119.8 percent year-on-year and ahead of the $2.09 consensus forecast.

Nvidia's confident growth outlook added further fuel to investor sentiment. The company projected annual sales growth of around 70 percent for fiscal year 2028, well above the market estimate of 44.8 percent.

Following the earnings release, Nvidia climbed more than 4 percent in after-hours trading, with AI and semiconductor-related stocks including Micron and SK hynix's American depositary receipts also rising. The rally spread to domestic semiconductor shares, with the market viewing the results as a catalyst to ease recent concerns about a slowdown in AI investment and memory chip demand.

"Nvidia's results have improved the visibility of HBM and DRAM demand and strengthened memory makers' pricing power in negotiations," said Han Ji-young, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities. "I believe investor sentiment toward semiconductors — which had been weighed down by anxiety for some time — is now entering a recovery phase."

Han added that the domestic market on Thursday was set to open higher, led by semiconductors, on the back of relief over July personal consumption expenditure inflation data and Nvidia's after-hours gain of more than 4 percent, along with after-hours advances of more than 3 percent for Micron and SanDisk. She forecast that the positive sector momentum would continue to broaden during the session.