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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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The Euro Report 1: France’s Electronics Lifecycle Market where Repair and Resale Outpace Recycling

Jun 23, 2026

France is emerging as Europe’s clearest example of electronics value shifting from recycling toward reuse and lifecycle management: Commercial proof points are mounting — Back Market closed 2025 with $3.5 billion in GMV and its first profitable year, while Amazon’s €15 billion investment roadmap, Google’s first French data center, and SoftBank’s €45 billion campus signal a coming wave of high-value data center decommissioning. For investors looking at that market, the key takeaway is that value is migrating from shredding and smelting toward capture, repair, and remarketing, and France offers one of the clearest previews of where that shift is heading.

Research: Memory Inflation, Component Spillover, and ITAD Harvesting Strategy, 2026-2027

Jun 8, 2026

the component market is undergoing substantial transformation. Memory prices have doubled. Enterprise SSD supply won’t normalize until late 2027 at the earliest. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has cut off helium supply critical to chip fabrication, stalled hyperscaler data center builds, and driven freight costs high enough to break international remarketing economics. China’s rare earth export controls — with a key suspension expiring November 10, 2026 — are adding licensing friction to the same semiconductor supply chains that determine what secondary market hardware is worth.