Bank of America Starts Penguin Solutions at Buy With $100 Price Target

Samsung Electronics reported the most profitable quarter ever by any company at $80.2 billion, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company posted record third-quarter revenue of $46.7 billion, up 50% year over year. Samsung, the world's largest memory manufacturer, counts Qualcomm, Alphabet, Tesla, Advanced Micro Devices and Amazon among its main customers. TSMC, the world's largest manufacturer of AI chips, produces over 60% of all global contract chips and over 90% of advanced chips, with NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm, Intel, Apple and Broadcom among its customers. Earlier this week, SpaceX announced it will raise $40 billion in debt to buy NVIDIA chips as it scales its AI compute, with a payback period well under one year thanks to deals with Google and Anthropic. The results and the SpaceX debt raise suggest record capital expenditure on AI infrastructure will continue.

Samsung Electronics released preliminary third-quarter 2026 earnings guidance on October 8, projecting consolidated operating profit of approximately 107.4 trillion Korean won, up about 782.5% year on year, with consolidated sales of roughly 195 trillion Korean won, up about 126.6%. Earlier, Micron Technology reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue of 54.23 billion US dollars, up about 379% year on year, and guided next-quarter revenue to approximately 61.5 billion dollars. Guolian Minsheng Securities stressed that the memory industry is entering a supercycle, with AI server demand continuing to drive upgrades in HBM, DRAM, and enterprise SSD configurations, while supply-side constraints on advanced process capacity and long-term agreement lock-in mechanisms make the upward price trend clear. Leading manufacturers such as Micron have already locked in more than 35% of revenue through 2030 via long-term agreements and plan to boost shareholder returns. As a result, as of 14:11 on October 9, 2026, the STAR 50 ETF Ping An, ticker 589150, saw its underlying index, the SSE STAR 50 Index, ticker 000688, rise 0.23%, with constituents Amlogic up 5.84%, Transsion Holdings up 5.42%, Times Electric up 4.35%, Skyverse up 4.23%, and SJ Semiconductor up 4.05%.

CNBC's Jim Cramer said on Friday that Micron Technology could eventually buy back as much as 10% of its shares, calling the potential repurchase larger than any other buyback ever, including NVIDIA's. Cramer, who discussed the impact of Toshiba's announcement on memory companies, said Micron faces very low indirect impact and argued the company is no longer cyclical but a secular growth company. Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes has set a $2,200 share price target on Micron, which trades at a forward P/E of 7, citing long-term agreements that add demand visibility. Micron's latest quarter saw revenue grow 379% and gross margins rise 41 percentage points to 87%, with non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $33.42 versus $3 a year earlier; its DRAM business, 73% of total revenue, grew 343% annually while NAND grew 526% to $14.10 billion. The company said its HBM4 capacity was completely sold out for 2026, secured $32 billion in supply commitments in fiscal Q4, and saw its backlog jump to $150 billion from $100 billion, while allocating $200 billion in capital expenditure to expand capacity.

Lynx Equity Strategies analyst KC Rajkumar expects the AI semiconductor rally to extend into year-end, with Nvidia, Micron Technology and Sandisk among the names leading the move. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index pulled back modestly Wednesday after four consecutive sessions of gains, but Rajkumar said the broader rally that began after the Federal Reserve's Sept. 15 meeting remains intact, with AI semiconductor stocks bought in waves as the sector shrugs off higher bond yields. Micron was the latest beneficiary, rising roughly 4% Wednesday despite a weaker broader market, after breaking out of its trading range in early September. On memory pricing, Samsung reported preliminary third-quarter operating profit up roughly ninefold year over year and Micron's August-quarter operating profit rose about 11%, while Micron management said supply-demand conditions in fiscal 2027 and 2028 should be significantly tighter than in fiscal 2026. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing reported third-quarter revenue growth of 51% year over year, above the high end of its guidance, which Rajkumar said could push TSMC's 2026 revenue growth from its guidance of slightly above 40% to at least the mid-40% range. Rajkumar added that AI semiconductors are emerging from a period of investor skepticism and are no longer the crowded trade they were several months ago, pointing to growing popularity of AI agents from Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic and stronger-than-expected AI-driven services at Accenture as signs demand is broadening.