Japanese storage-chip specialist Kioxia saw its shares jump as much as 16 percent on Monday, with the stock changing hands at €344.05 in European trading, as a wave of bullish signals rippled through the memory-chip complex.
The rally, which follows a 15 percent advance in Tokyo where the shares closed at ¥56,930, marks a continuation of a remarkable recovery from late-July lows. Since the start of the year, the stock has gained a staggering 496 percent, though it remains roughly 45 percent below its 52-week peak of €621.00 reached in June.
SanDisk’s Long-Range Forecast Ignites Sector
The immediate catalyst came from across the Pacific. SanDisk, the Western Digital spin-off, used its investor day on August 13 to lay out ambitious multi-year targets, projecting annual revenue growth in the mid-to-high teens percentage range for fiscal years 2028 through 2030. The company also guided toward gross margins of approximately 80 percent and operating margins near 75 percent by the end of the decade.
Those numbers electrified the storage sector, reinforcing what JPMorgan analysts describe as a pronounced shortage of memory capacity that continues to support pricing power across the industry. The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) added further fuel, lifting its global semiconductor market forecast for the current year to $1.65 trillion, with the memory segment alone expected to grow by 302 percent in 2026 on the back of insatiable demand from artificial intelligence and high-performance computing applications.
The competitive response has been swift. Media reports indicate that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have boosted their capital expenditure on production facilities by more than 35 percent in the first half of 2026, committing a combined ¥43.218 trillion Korean won to expand capacity for AI-relevant memory solutions.
Buyback Completion and a New Product Offensive
Kioxia’s own moves have reinforced the positive narrative. The company concluded its ¥800 billion share repurchase program on August 10, having bought back 16,133,500 shares — approximately 2.94 percent of outstanding stock — in just ten days. The swift execution of the buyback, announced on August 11, was widely seen as a signal of management’s confidence in the company’s cash-generation capabilities.
On the product front, Kioxia unveiled its new GP1 SSD series, built on the PCIe 6.0 standard and delivering up to 10 million IOPS. The drives, which leverage the company’s XL-FLASH Gen2 technology, are designed specifically for AI infrastructure workloads and will be available in E3.S and E1.S form factors. First samples are expected to reach partners and customers toward the end of 2026, with the company targeting a tenfold increase in performance — up to 100 million IOPS — for future generations.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Kioxia?
Fundamentals Strengthen, But Questions Remain
The operational picture has improved markedly. For the first quarter of fiscal 2026, which ended in June, Kioxia reported revenue of ¥1.77 trillion, up 415.5 percent year-on-year, with net income of ¥842.17 billion. The surge was driven largely by a 70 percent quarter-on-quarter increase in average selling prices for NAND memory.
Morningstar, which published its latest assessment on August 4, maintains a fair value estimate of ¥65,000 per share. While first-quarter revenue came in roughly 7 percent below the research house’s expectations, analysts there highlighted the company’s disciplined capital expenditure and the aggressive buyback program as positive factors for shareholder value.
Technical observers are now watching the ¥56,020 level, corresponding to the 25-day moving average, as a key support zone. A sustained hold above that mark would signal the uptrend remains intact.
Ownership Shifts and Legal Clouds
The shareholder register has undergone significant changes in recent weeks. Toshiba trimmed its stake to 14.12 percent on August 3, ceding its position as the largest shareholder to the Bain Capital-led consortium BCPE Pangea Cayman2, which holds 14.19 percent. However, Bain’s complete exit as a direct shareholder in early July, combined with SK Hynix’s continuing veto rights, has complicated negotiations over a potential merger with Western Digital, according to media reports.
Adding to the overhang, a U.S. federal district court in Texas ordered Kioxia on August 3 to pay approximately $229 million in damages to Viasat Inc. for patent infringement related to error-correction technology. The company has already booked the loss in its June quarter and has announced plans to appeal the verdict.
For now, the market’s attention remains fixed on the AI-driven memory supercycle. With capacity tight, prices rising, and a new product generation on the horizon, Kioxia’s shares are riding a wave of optimism — even as the stock’s substantial distance from its highs serves as a reminder of how far the journey back has been.
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