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Client Brief: Samsung Just Posted the Largest Tech Profit Yet Reported: Old Memory Now Costs More Than AI Chips

Samsung’s Q2 2026 operating profit of roughly KRW89.4 trillion (~$58.4 billion) is attributed almost entirely to its memory business. The South Korean tech giant has not yet disclosed a divisional breakdown but market expectation is that the Device Solutions (DRAM, NAND, HBM) division carried the bulk of the profit, while the consumer electronics division posted comparatively weak results due to its own rising component costs.
The mechanism behind that is directly relevant to component pricing in the ITAD channel. DRAM contract prices are up 58–63% quarter-on-quarter and NAND Flash up 70–75% QoQ. Legacy memory has been hit hardest by scarcity, with DDR4 spot pricing running above even advanced HBM3e, which is a real inversion where end-of-life memory costs more per gigabit than the chip industry’s most advanced product.

That inversion is the number to watch. It means components pulled from older, decommissioned enterprise hardware are sitting on unusually strong resale value right now. Industry commentary places relief no earlier than late 2027–2028, so this is a multi-quarter pricing environment, not a one-time spike, though it is a window, not a new floor.

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Inside Western Europe’s ITAD & Electronics Lifecycle Sectors

Jul 5, 2026

The four markets covered in the Euro Report series constitute a single, investable Western European ITAD and electronics-lifecycle complex: roughly 180 million people, four distinct regulatory regimes, and a combined hyperscale and AI infrastructure build-out now measured in tens of billions of euros of disclosed, committed capital. We view the region as underpriced relative to the United States on a like-for-like basis, not because the underlying asset flows are smaller, but because capital formation has been uneven across the four markets and because Germany — the largest single market in the group by a wide margin — remains structurally unconsolidated.

The Euro Report 4: Germany: Europe’s Largest Electronics Market Can’t Account for Its Own E-Waste

Jul 5, 2026

Germany is Europe’s largest electronics market by far — and by its own government’s measurement, one of the region’s weaker performers at collecting what it places on the market. That gap between size and system performance is where the opportunity sits for ITAD operators, recyclers, and investors. This report follows that gap into three places most country-level briefings skip: where “reusable” German electronics actually end up, the battery-recycling buildout tied to the auto industry, and the solar-panel waste wave Germany will hit before almost anyone else.