Samsung told its earnings call that AI customers will pass 30 percent of foundry revenue this year, and that HBM4 will pass 60 percent of its HBM sales in the second half

Money & World

The Editorial Team · July 30, 2026

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What it changes

If you are trying to work out how long the memory shortage lasts, the two numbers from the call are about allocation rather than volume, and allocation is the part a buyer feels. A foundry that moves from a high 10 percent AI revenue share to more than 30 percent in a single year is a foundry with less room for everybody else, and Samsung says more than half of that revenue will come off advanced processes. A memory business that expects HBM4 to be more than 60 percent of HBM sales in the second half is a memory business converting its best capacity to its newest product. Neither statement is a forecast about price. Both are statements about where the wafers go. The line that sits underneath them is in the deck rather than the call: supply constraints continue in spite of efforts to increase production. Read against that, the cash flow appendix is the sentence worth holding onto. Samsung spent KRW 14.11 trillion on property, plant and equipment in the quarter, less than the KRW 17.13 trillion it spent in the first, while operating cash flow was KRW 105.08 trillion. Quarterly capital spending is lumpy and cash spent is not the same as a plan announced, so this is not evidence of a decision. It is, though, the only capital spending number the company published on Thursday, and it did not go up.

The presentation runs to sixteen pages, and the two numbers that moved the story were not in it.

Samsung Electronics published the deck alongside its second-quarter results and then held the call. Kim Yoon-soo at the Seoul Economic Daily reports that on the call the company put revenue from AI customers, meaning AI chips and high-performance computing, at more than 30 percent of foundry revenue this year, up from what it described as the high 10 percent range last year. Revenue from major United States customers, big technology firms among them, is expected to grow by double digits against last year. Advanced processes are expected to account for more than half of foundry revenue.

The same reporter has Samsung saying HBM4 will account for more than 60 percent of total HBM sales in the second half of this year, and that the company intends to hold similar market shares in HBM and in general-purpose DRAM. Samsung began mass-production shipments of HBM4 in February.

Those remarks were made in Korean and reach this desk in the outlet's English translation, which the outlet labels as such.

What the deck does say

The document corroborates the direction without carrying either figure. On the foundry page Samsung tells investors it will ramp 2-nanometre second-generation mobile production and 4-nanometre language processing units in the second half, expand base-die sales, and target double-digit revenue growth on demand across the United States and China.

The memory page is blunter. Demand for server DRAM, enterprise solid-state drives and high bandwidth memory is expected to keep the market undersupplied, the deck says, despite some moderation in mobile and personal computers, and Samsung's own supply constraints will continue in spite of efforts to increase production.

The scale underneath it

Memory revenue was KRW 120.8 trillion in the quarter. It was KRW 74.8 trillion in the first quarter and KRW 21.2 trillion in the same quarter last year, increases of 62 percent and 471 percent.

The Device Solutions division that contains it reported KRW 127.5 trillion of revenue and KRW 89.2 trillion of operating profit. The comparable divisional operating profit a year earlier was KRW 0.4 trillion. Research and development spending reached KRW 16.0 trillion, up 78 percent on the year.

This desk covered the results themselves on Wednesday evening. The call is the part that was new on Thursday.

The number nobody put on a slide

Samsung published no capital expenditure plan on Thursday. What it published was the cash flow appendix, and that shows purchases of property, plant and equipment of KRW 14.11 trillion in the second quarter, against KRW 17.13 trillion in the first quarter and KRW 13.04 trillion a year earlier. Cash flow from operating activities in the same three months was KRW 105.08 trillion. Net cash stood at KRW 167.59 trillion at 30 June, against KRW 86.70 trillion a year before.

Cash spent on plant in a quarter is not a spending plan, and the figure moves around for reasons that have nothing to do with intent. It is still the only capital spending number in the document, and it is lower than the quarter before it.

Samsung told its earnings call that AI customers will pass 30 percent of foundry revenue this year, and that HBM4 will pass 60 percent of its HBM sales in the second half

What the deck does say

The scale underneath it

The number nobody put on a slide

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