Direct:
Adata's earnings call this week put a number on what every memory module maker has been hinting at: DRAM and NAND contract prices are each going up more than 40 percent in Q2 2026, and major customers have already locked up 2027 output. That's the floor estimate from a company whose chairman has been bullish for nine months running. TrendForce's latest survey is more aggressive – 58 to 63 percent QoQ on conventional DRAM, 70 to 75 percent on NAND – so Adata is either being conservative for investor optics or seeing better blended pricing than the spot data suggests.
The supply story is the same story it has been since late 2025, just further along. SK Hynix is reportedly close on a multi-year DDR5 LTA with Microsoft and in five-year LTA discussions with Google on commodity DRAM. Samsung's memory chief Kim Jaejune told the April 30 earnings call that significant shortages will persist through at least 2027, and that some customers have already secured allocation through that year. Micron has its entire 2026 HBM book locked up, including HBM4. The hyperscalers are no longer buying memory the way the rest of the industry buys memory – they are reserving fab output years in advance, accepting shorter contracts with floating price terms because guaranteed allocation matters more than price certainty.
What this means for Adata specifically explains why they're stockpiling. Q1 2026 EPS hit NT$30.05, the highest in the company's 25 year history, on 55.7 percent gross margin. Inventory was NT$40 billion at end of April and chairman Simon Chen wants it at NT$50 billion by June. When you bought your wafers months ago at lower prices and the contract market reprices 40 to 70 percent higher every quarter, every dollar of inventory is a margin lever.
For consumer SSDs the practical redirect is bleak. NAND wafer supply to module makers is the lowest priority allocation tier – below enterprise SSDs, below eMMC/UFS, below everything. Suppliers are explicitly limiting client SSD output to maintain pricing. If you've been waiting for a 2TB Gen 5 deal, you are waiting against a market that is structurally disinterested in your segment until late 2027 at the earliest. Buy what you need now, not what you might want in a year.
Sources:
- DigiTimes, “Adata sees DRAM, NAND prices rise 40% in 2Q26” (May 9, 2026)
- TrendForce, “AI Server Demand to Drive Memory Contract Price Increases in 2Q26” (March 31, 2026)
- TrendForce, “From Annual Deals to 3-5 Year LTAs: Samsung and SK hynix Reset Big Tech Memory Contracts” (April 9, 2026)
- Taipei Times, “Adata expects another record-high profit this quarter” (April 29, 2026)
- Taipei Times, “Memory squeeze to continue into next year: Adata” (March 6, 2026)
- Tom's Hardware, “Samsung and SK hynix warn AI-driven memory shortages could last until 2027 and beyond” (early May 2026)
- Tom's Hardware, “DRAM prices predicted to jump 63% in Q2, NAND up to 75%” (April 1, 2026)
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