① Goldman Sachs strategists maintain their target price of 12,000 points for the KOSPI index – there is nearly an 80% upside from current levels; ② They say that investors have underestimated the duration of AI’s positive impact on South Korea’s memory chip manufacturers, and the severe shortage of memory chips will only worsen by 2027; ③ On Monday, driven by strong performance of semiconductor stocks, the KOSPI index in South Korea rose significantly.
Timothy Moe, chief stock strategist for Goldman Sachs Asia-Pacific, maintains a target price of 1,200 points for the Korean KOSPI index, indicating nearly 80% upside from current levels. On Monday, driven by strong performance of semiconductor stocks, the KOSPI index rose sharply, opening at 3.34%, and as of press time was at 6,886.73 points. Moe said that investors have underestimated the duration of the positive impact of artificial intelligence on South Korea’s memory chip manufacturers. The global competition in data center construction will only exacerbate the severe shortage of memory chips by 2027. He expects KOSPI constituents to achieve an annual profit growth rate of approximately 360% this year, and this rate will slow to around 35% by 2027. Currently, the index’s price-earnings ratio is only 5.3 times, while Moe sets his target price based on a forward price-earnings ratio of 7.5 times. Despite risks from Chinese companies like ChangXin Memory and political obstacles in data center construction in the US, he believes that the fundamentals remain favorable for advanced memory chip manufacturers in the coming years.