Japanese memory chipmaker Kioxia saw its shares plunge nearly 16 per cent on Monday after its latest financial forecasts disappointed investors, despite record profits and booming demand for NAND flash memory.
According to Business Insider, the sell-off followed the company’s 30 October earnings announcement, which revealed that its December-quarter revenue and operating profit would barely improve on the previous three months. Apparently, making enormous amounts of money is no longer sufficient to satisfy the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street.
Kioxia reported revenue of ¥2.48 trillion (€14.1 billion) and operating profit of ¥1.99 trillion (€11.3 billion) for the July-to-September quarter, both company records. Revenue increased 40 per cent from the preceding quarter, while operating profit surged 57 per cent.
The company benefited from rising NAND flash prices as data centre operators scrambled for storage capacity. Average selling prices rose about 25 per cent during the quarter, while shipments measured in bits rose by a low-double-digit percentage.
However, Kioxia expects December-quarter revenue of approximately ¥2.5 trillion (€14.2 billion) and operating profit of ¥2 trillion (€11.4 billion). Analysts had anticipated operating profit closer to ¥2.32 trillion (€13.2 billion), leaving a substantial gap between the company’s forecast and market expectations.
Bernstein analysts led by Mark Li described the outlook as “a massive miss”, reflecting disappointment that the extraordinary growth experienced earlier in the year appears to be slowing.
Kioxia blamed much of the weakness on shipment timing. Some customers brought orders forward into the September quarter, while deliveries of enterprise storage products slipped into the March quarter because of longer manufacturing lead times.
The company expects smartphones and PCs to account for a larger share of its December-quarter shipments. These lower-priced products will restrict average selling price growth, even though prices are expected to rise across individual applications.
Kioxia expects growth to accelerate again during the March quarter as delayed enterprise shipments are completed. Demand from data centre operators remains strong, and the company has found little evidence that customers are reducing their storage requirements.
There is certainly little evidence of customers abandoning the memory market. Kioxia says its entire planned production capacity for 2027 has already been allocated, with more than half its expected 2028 output covered by customer commitments. Negotiations are already taking place for contracts extending into 2029 and 2030.
The company expects NAND supply to remain tight throughout 2027. However, executives acknowledged that the enormous price increases seen earlier this year are unlikely to continue at the same pace indefinitely.
Kioxia faces another difficulty because it concentrates on NAND flash memory. Rivals Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix manufacture DRAM alongside NAND, giving them greater leverage when negotiating with customers desperate for several different types of memory. SK Hynix recently reported record profits and revealed long-term customer agreements covering more than half its production capacity for 2027 and 2028.
Kioxia’s collapse came despite its shares having risen more than 750 per cent during the first half of 2026. The company remains one of the biggest beneficiaries of the industry’s storage shortage, but investors appear increasingly unwilling to pay for growth that might arrive a quarter later than expected.
