TrendForce recently released a report that the NAND Flash market demand remained sluggish in the second quarter and the oversupply situation continued, causing the average selling price (ASP) of NAND Flash to continue to fall by 10~15% in the second quarter. The bit shipments increased by 19.9% month-on-month under the low base period in the first quarter. In total, the NAND Flash industry revenue in the second quarter increased by 7.4% month-on-month, with revenue of approximately US$9.338 billion.
TrendForce said that Samsung has joined the ranks of production cuts since the second quarter, and is expected to expand production cuts in the third quarter. While supply is converging, price increases are also brewing, and the oversupply situation is expected to be improved.
However, due to the large number of suppliers in the NAND Flash industry, most manufacturers still choose to actively sell goods in the third quarter even though inventory is still high. It is estimated that the average price decline of all NAND Flash products in the third quarter will converge to 5~10%. Shipments will increase with the momentum of peak season stocking, and the NAND Flash industry revenue is expected to continue to increase by more than 3% in the third quarter.
▲Image source TrendForce
In the second quarter, Micron had the highest revenue growth among all players, with a quarter-on-quarter increase of 27.6%, reaching US$1.21 billion. The recovery in revenue performance is mainly due to the reduction of customer inventory in the PC and Mobile markets. Client SSD in particular benefited from the increase in average carrying capacity, and bit shipments hit a single-quarter high.
As the entire industry actively reduces production, Micron believes that the supply and demand situation will become healthier in the second half of the year. However, from a full-year perspective, high inventory will still suppress the recovery of the NAND Flash industry. The entire industry is expected to maintain low supply bit output until 2024.
Other companies such as SK hynix & Solidigm and Western Digital have benefited from factors such as the continued reduction of SSD inventory in the channel market and the growth of single-machine capacity in the consumer electronics market. Bit shipments have increased significantly. Drive revenue upward in the second quarter. Among them, SK Group’s revenue growth ranked second, with a month-on-month growth of approximately 26.6%; Western Digital’s revenue growth was approximately 5.4%.
Samsung and Kioxia are the only two companies to experience a decline in revenue. Although their bit shipments have grown, they are still unable to withstand the impact of falling average selling prices.
Samsung’s revenue in the second quarter decreased by 1.0% quarter-on-quarter to approximately US$2.90 billion. Among them, AI servers, which the market continues to focus on, continue to compress the shipment scale of general-purpose servers. Revenue in the NAND Flash field did not decline due to the AI boom. Benefit; Kioxia’s second-quarter revenue decreased by approximately 1.3% quarter-on-quarter to approximately US$1.83 billion.
