Japanese memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings expects its April-June operating profit to hit 1.3 trillion yen ($8.20 billion), driven by surging demand for chips used in artificial intelligence.
The company said the "strength of the flash memory market is expected to continue," as booming demand from AI data centers drives up prices and shipments of memory semiconductors.
The forecast represents a dramatic turnaround for the chipmaker. While consensus figures were not immediately available, the projection includes an anticipated 48-fold jump in net profit for the quarter. Kioxia has been shifting its production to focus on high-end flash memory products, which are critical components in AI servers built by companies like Nvidia and other cloud providers.
The massive profit forecast signals that the boom in AI-related infrastructure spending is a powerful and sustained revenue driver for key component suppliers in the semiconductor industry.
Kioxia's guidance underscores the intense demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and other advanced chips that power AI applications. The company, a major global supplier of flash memory, is a direct beneficiary of the capital expenditure wave from cloud giants and AI service providers, who require vast amounts of specialized memory to train and run large language models.
This strong forecast from a key supplier provides a bullish signal for the entire semiconductor sector, potentially lifting peers and competitors. Investors will watch Kioxia's final results for the quarter, due in July, to see if margins and shipments confirm the guidance and to assess the longevity of the current AI demand cycle.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.