That week can also be called a "super storage week." On Monday, CXMT went public, accepting public market pricing; on Wednesday and Thursday, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics successively released their Q2 financial reports, revealing data on profits, inventory, and capital expenditures.
On July 27, CXMT (688825.SH) started trading. Some made fortunes, some were confused, some could only stare, and others sighed after selling. That day, CXMT's stock price rapidly dropped from its opening price of 49.50 yuan to 38.11 yuan, then surged to 55.03 yuan, finally settling around 49 yuan.
On that same day, three markets across Shanghai, Seoul, and New York, all within the same industry, were calculating different futures. Among them, the Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.15%, the Shenzhen Component Index rose 2.72%, the STAR 50 Index rose 1.16%, and the Semiconductor Materials & Equipment Index rose 4.21%; the Korea Composite Index traced a more tortuous "V" shape; U.S. stocks opened high but closed low, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq reversing initial gains to close nearly flat, and chip stocks experienced a more dramatic reversal, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index turning from a 1.1% gain to close down 2.23%.
Did CXMT shake the global chip market? At least from this day onward, China's memory sector transitioned from being a follower of the global cycle to a variable that cannot be ignored when the global market revalues.
That week can also be called a "super storage week." On Monday, CXMT went public, accepting public market pricing; on Wednesday and Thursday, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics successively released their Q2 financial reports, revealing data on profits, inventory, and capital expenditures. Global capital continued to face long-term U.S. Treasury yields above 5%.
What is CXMT really worth, and what will the financial reports of the two Korean semiconductor companies "reveal"?
I
"Got it through routine IPO subscription, sold on the first day," "Added shares while trembling with fear," "Too scared"...
Allottees held their breath watching the ticker: some sold, some held, some chased. They weren't entirely rational, nor completely irrational, and among them were undoubtedly determined individuals. These several emotions were imprinted onto the same candlestick with long upper and lower shadows.
Around 9:44 AM on July 27, CXMT plunged to a low of 38.11 yuan. Only about ten minutes after opening, approximately 65 billion yuan had changed hands. Among these, medium and small orders cumulatively net sold about 37.8 billion yuan, while exceptionally large and large orders absorbed nearly an equal amount.
A turnover rate of 66.4% meant that out of the 4.503 billion shares available for trading on the first day, about 2.99 billion shares had transferred from original allottees to new buyers.
Millions of allotment shares were cashed out simultaneously, sell orders gradually breaking through buy orders layer by layer; when the price fell back to around 38 yuan, the absorption by large funds finally outweighed new selling pressure, and the stock price rebounded to above 46 yuan within minutes.
38.11 yuan wasn't the answer from valuation models either. It seemed more like a price left by the collision of two different time scales: one side was eager to realize paper profits several times over, while the other was willing to pay for the future of China's DRAM.
Logically, CXMT's closing market cap on its first day was about 2.1 trillion yuan higher than the fundamental midpoint of the model. The market didn't wait for HBM, yield rates, capacity, and profits to be realized item by item; instead, it first wrote a portion of the industry's future into today's price.
Therefore, whether 49 yuan is expensive or not depends on whether CXMT can gradually transform these 2+ trillion yuan of "option value" into capacity, technology, market share, and profits that can withstand cycles in the future.
"CXMT is the first truly world-class technology company on the A-share market, serving as the valuation anchor for big tech in A-shares. Moving forward, CXMT's performance will still greatly exceed expectations. Nomura Securities gave CXMT a long-term target price of 112 yuan. Goldman Sachs mentioned in a conference call that CXMT's HBM progress may far exceed expectations. This represents a new change in valuation logic," said a senior private equity professional. He attempted to add shares at the 40-yuan level, but his system network failed, and he couldn't buy.
II
What exactly does 49 yuan buy? Is it CXMT's current profits, the boom of the DRAM cycle, or the possibilities of China's memory sector over the next decade?
On Monday, the A-share market first gave a price: 49 yuan, approximately 3.28 trillion yuan market cap. But this isn't the answer; it's merely the first quote.
On the subsequent Wednesday and Thursday, SK Hynix's financial report will tell the market exactly how much AI storage can earn; Samsung Electronics' financial report will answer what valuation should be given to scale, technology, and capital expenditures.
Looking at profits alone, the market can hardly be disappointed. Samsung Electronics has already forecast Q2 sales of about 171 trillion won and operating profit of about 89.4 trillion won, a year-on-year increase of over 18 times; South Korea's semiconductor export value in the first 20 days of July grew 180.6% year-on-year, also providing solid evidence of demand.
But the market is no longer satisfied with "how much was earned in Q2." The market will ask about Q3 DRAM and NAND contract prices, HBM4 customer certification and yield rates, whether inventory is turning into restocking, how much new capacity will be added by 2027-2028, and whether capital expenditures can ultimately turn into free cash flow.
CXMT must also be written into this supply schedule. Domestically, capacity expansion represents progress in import substitution; placed in the global market, it means that beyond Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology, a fourth DRAM manufacturer is achieving scale production. The stronger the demand, the more manufacturers want to expand; the faster the expansion, the sooner the market worries about the next round of oversupply. The difficulty of cyclical industries lies right here: today's shortage often breeds tomorrow's surplus. This is precisely why the two Korean companies' financial reports serve as a reference for CXMT's valuation.
Industry matters are measured in years: orders, factory construction, technology iteration, and customer certification cannot be rushed; financial statement matters are measured in quarters: revenue, gross margin, depreciation, and capital expenditures are settled quarter by quarter; capital's ledger, however, is measured in days: long-term bond yields, fund redemptions, and foreign capital flows are recalculated daily.
The intraday reversal of U.S. memory stocks on July 27 posed another question: Is CXMT a beneficiary of global prosperity, or a participant that might change the future supply landscape?
In less than 10 years, CXMT has "grown" into the world's fourth scaled DRAM manufacturer, with its market cap also entering the ranks of global semiconductor giants. However, there remains distance in terms of profit scale, advanced products, customer structure, and technology ecosystem compared to Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology.
Yet, who could have imagined that CXMT, which only debuted its 8Gb DDR4 at the World Manufacturing Convention in September 2019 and received its first order in November that same year, would, in less than 7 years, ascend to the top of A-share market cap. As early as the 2022 World IC Conference and the 2nd IC China Expo, Zhu Yiming, Chairman and CEO of CXMT, emphasized in his speech titled "Challenges of the Globalized Semiconductor Supply Chain Under New Circumstances": The globalization of the industrial chain is a historical trend, and cooperation leads to win-win outcomes.
Facing public market pricing, CXMT must pass many hurdles: sentiment, profits, cycles, technology, and global competition.
Regardless, July 27, 2026, belongs to the STAR Market, which opened seven years ago.
Peng Yigang, Deputy Director of the Market Development Department at the Shanghai Stock Exchange, spoke about the "STAR Market" at a forum during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC): Companies are stars, and the STAR Market itself is also a new star in the capital market. He invited those present to "join hands and venture into the vast sea of stars."
At the close on July 27, the paper value of the shares held by Zhu Yiming exceeded 78 billion yuan; across the ocean, Micron Technology, SanDisk, and a batch of semiconductor stocks faced selling pressure. The possibility of Chinese memory capacity expansion and domestically produced immersion DUV lithography machines were also quickly priced into global chip stocks. The Chinese market was adding a premium for CXMT's scarcity, while overseas markets began revaluing it for the competition it might bring.
On the evening of July 27, what might Zhu Yiming be thinking? He might glance at that long candlestick. But more pressing than the 49 yuan closing price is how the 57.9 billion yuan (which could reach 66.6 billion yuan with full greenshoe exercise) financing will transform into equipment, yield rates, capacity, and next-generation products. It's also about whether the future prepaid by the market today can be realized quarter by quarter in subsequent financial reports.
This article is from the WeChat public account "Economic Observer," author: Ouyang Xiaohong
