SEOUL — Shares of Samsung Electronics surged Wednesday, closing up 6.68% as South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index extended its winning streak to a third consecutive session, driven by intensifying investor appetite for the country’s dominant semiconductor manufacturers.
Samsung Electronics closed at 255,000 won, up 16,000 won from the previous session, according to Korea JoongAng Daily. Rival chipmaker SK Hynix also posted a strong gain, rising 5.54% to close at 1.5 million won. The rally in both stocks helped drive the broader Kospi index up 233.51 points, or 3.68%, to close at 6,579.04, following gains of 0.65% and 0.73% in the two preceding sessions.
The Kospi opened Wednesday 1.47% higher and continued adding to those gains as foreign and institutional investors poured money into major chipmakers throughout the session. The rally proved forceful enough that the Korea Exchange activated a buy-side sidecar at 11:57 a.m. local time, a circuit-breaker-style mechanism that temporarily suspends program trading for five minutes when the market moves sharply in one direction. Trading volume for the session was moderate, at 355 million shares worth 26.21 trillion won, or roughly $18.49 billion, even as decliners outnumbered advancers 477 to 378 across the broader market.
Lee Kyung-min, an analyst at Daishin Securities, said the session reflected renewed investor confidence in the durability of demand tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure. “Large order backlogs and new orders reaffirmed that investment in AI infrastructure and semiconductor demand remain solid, stimulating investor sentiment,” Lee said.
The rally followed government data released this week showing South Korea’s semiconductor exports surged 155.4% year-over-year to roughly $9.95 billion in the first 10 days of August, helping drive the country’s overall outbound shipments up 45.3% to $21.3 billion over the same period, a record for the window. That data provided the clearest signal yet that global demand for memory chips, driven by the ongoing artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout, remains robust even as broader technology markets elsewhere have shown signs of volatility.
Wednesday’s gains added to Samsung’s rebound from a rockier stretch earlier in the week. On Monday, foreign investors had aggressively sold both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix shares, offloading a combined 1.02 trillion won and 410.3 billion won worth of stock, respectively, amid caution tied to reports about the rising competitiveness of Chinese semiconductor firms. That selling pressure reversed sharply once the strong export figures were released, with Samsung shares having tumbled as low as 224,000 won in early trading Tuesday before rebounding on the export data and continuing higher into Wednesday’s session.
Wednesday’s advance also came amid reports that Singapore’s state investment firm Temasek is exploring direct investments in South Korean semiconductor leaders, a development analysts said reflected growing international confidence in the long-term value of the country’s chip sector, even as some valuations remain relatively low compared with the scale of the AI-driven memory boom underway.
Samsung’s rally builds on an extraordinary run for the stock throughout 2026. Shares climbed more than 100% during the first half of the year, driven overwhelmingly by the company’s semiconductor division, which accounted for 99.7% of Samsung’s operating profit in the second quarter, according to the company’s disclosed segment data. Of Samsung’s 89.5 trillion won in second-quarter operating profit, 89.2 trillion won came from semiconductors alone, underscoring how thoroughly the company’s earnings have become dependent on memory chip pricing and demand, even as its mobile, television and appliance businesses have contributed comparatively little to overall profitability.
Some analysts have projected even steeper gains ahead. Recent forecasts have called for Samsung’s third-quarter 2026 operating profit to reach 112 trillion won, an 817% year-over-year improvement, supported by an expected operating margin of 55%. Some projections have also suggested Samsung’s shareholder distributions could eventually climb to between 100 trillion and 200 trillion won annually, a roughly tenfold increase over current payout levels that would imply a dividend yield exceeding 7% at current valuations, though such forecasts remain subject to considerable uncertainty given the historical volatility of memory chip pricing cycles.
Wednesday’s rally in Seoul came even as major U.S. indexes closed lower overnight, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 0.34%, the S&P 500 declining 0.32% to 7,728.2, and the Nasdaq Composite shedding 0.6%. The divergence underscored how strongly the domestic chip export data, rather than broader global market sentiment, drove Wednesday’s session in Seoul, with Korean investors focusing squarely on the country’s own semiconductor sector rather than following Wall Street’s lead.
The Korean won also strengthened against the dollar during Wednesday’s session, adding to the broadly positive tone across South Korean financial markets. With the Kospi now having risen for three consecutive sessions and Samsung and SK Hynix both posting substantial single-day gains, investors are likely to continue watching upcoming export data and any further developments tied to global memory chip demand as key drivers of sentiment heading into the remainder of August.
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