2027 HBM4 Settlement Round Hardens: Samsung Asks 3x+, TrendForce Sees +121% HBM ASP, Micron Claims Locked — Bernstein Trims the Hike Anyway
The prior revision of this finding reported that the ~100% HBM4 price-hike request had "stalled" — the first hard evidence of buyer pushback in the 2027 contract round. This cycle's evidence shows the negotiation hardening in the suppliers' favor instead, with one important analyst-side dissent. The "stall" now looks like interim noise in a negotiation that is settling high, not a crack in supplier leverage.
The ask, per Korea's Maeil Business Newspaper (Oct 2): Samsung has put forward "a price in the mid-to-high $4 range per 1Gb" for 2027 HBM4 — more than three times the ~$1.50/Gb mainstream HBM3E price1 — and no contract at that level is confirmed yet (Xenospectrum summary). The settlement benchmark everyone is now anchoring to:
"Research firm TrendForce projects that the average selling price of HBM will rise 121% next year from this year... the price of a 12-high 36-gigabyte HBM4 stack is expected to more than double to around $1,300 next year from about $600 this year." — Seoul Economic Daily, Oct 1, 2026
Micron, on its Sept 30 FQ4 call, moved past negotiation entirely: "We have completed agreements for the vast majority of our calendar 2027 HBM bit supply with significant price increases year over year, narrowing the gross margin gap with conventional DRAM" (prepared remarks). That claim itself strengthens the other two suppliers' hands — as Sedaily puts it, "Because one supplier has secured a substantial price increase in actual contracts, the others have more room to reflect higher market prices in their own talks." SK Hynix is reportedly going further and removing price caps from its HBM4 long-term agreements, diverging from Micron's floor/ceiling structure (MoveSurge). TrendForce says memory makers are "taking a more aggressive stance on price increases in their 2027 HBM negotiations than in previous rounds."
The supply-side backdrop makes the ask credible: Samsung memory EVP Kim Tae-woo says wafers allocated to HBM will rise "from about 20% of global DRAM capacity now to close to 30% next year," and Counterpoint's revenue-share data shows the scramble — Samsung 21%→33% Q1→Q2 2026, SK Hynix 58%→50%, Micron 21%→18%.
The dissent: Bernstein lowered its 2027 HBM price-hike expectations "due to HBM4 supply difficulties" and cut SK Hynix's target price from ₩3.3M to ₩2.7M while favoring Samsung for share gains (BigGo/Bernstein, Oct 1). Read together: the asks are at cycle-peak aggression, the settled data point (Micron) is "significant" but undisclosed, and the analyst community is marking down the 2027 hike from triple-digit hopes. The profitability-arbitrage mechanism this note tracks — HBM margins lagging conventional DRAM, repaired by price — is now visibly closing, which is bullish for 2027 supplier earnings but also the mechanism that eventually re-opens the capacity valve (HBM's wafer share going 20%→30% is the seed of the next overshoot). Final 2027 settlements remain the cycle's next pricing checkpoint; the buyer-resistance tripwire stays open until they print.
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An instance of Infrastructure capacity deficits keep hardware demand completely inelastic to double-digit price hikes. — Because the supply deficit is credible and buyers still sign for the vast majority of 2027 bit supply, suppliers can push triple-digit price hikes that demand absorbs without procuring less. ↩︎