A memory upcycle is not one trade. It is at least two, and last quarter they pointed in opposite directions. SK hynix reported a 76 per cent operating margin for the three months to June. Wonik IPS, which sells deposition tools to SK hynix and Samsung, reported revenue down 10.6 per cent and operating profit down 49.5 per cent for the same quarter. Both numbers are filed. We went through every equipment maker that discloses a Korea line to find out which one is the outlier.
Last verified: 10 August 2026. Built from the most recent reported quarter at ASML, Applied Materials, Lam Research and Tokyo Electron, from SK hynix’s and Samsung’s Q2 2026 releases and Micron’s fiscal Q3 filing, and from Korean suppliers’ own disclosures. Every figure here is a reported actual. We print no target prices, no ratings and no picks — see the note at the end for why.
Editor’s opinion
The upcycle has reached the chipmakers and not yet the tool makers
Our view is that the time it takes to pour concrete separates the memory boom from the equipment boom, and that the filed numbers for the June 2026 quarter show the gap rather than the convergence. If you own Korean equipment suppliers as a way to own the memory cycle, you are early by construction, not by sentiment.
The strongest support is the Korea line. Applied Materials sold 1,572 million dollars into Korea in its April quarter against 1,562 million a year earlier, while total company revenue grew 11 per cent, so Korea fell from 22 to 20 per cent of the business. Tokyo Electron’s Korea revenue peaked in the March quarter and fell 12 per cent in June. Memory is a minority of equipment revenue everywhere the companies break it out, and the margin gap is enormous: memory makers at 70 to 80 per cent, equipment makers at 29 to 37.
Against that, and at full strength: the orders exist now. Lam grew revenue 30 per cent year on year. ASML says its 2027 Low NA EUV capacity is close to fully covered by orders it has already taken, and looks for memory-related system sales to grow more than 75 per cent this year. So the equipment cycle is visibly turning, and one Korean supplier is already capturing it; the argument is about when the turn reaches reported profit, not whether. The view survives because the one Korean supplier that has reported the June quarter is the one closest to memory capex, and it went backwards.
Andrew Lee. This section argues a view, not a fact. It is not a forecast, not a recommendation and not a valuation. The sources below carry the material it draws on.
The tool makers’ Korea revenue barely moved
Three of the four big equipment makers publish a Korea revenue line, and all three put Korea at roughly a fifth of the business. Applied Materials reported Korea at 20 per cent of revenue in its April quarter, Lam Research at 20 per cent in June, Tokyo Electron at 20.8 per cent. That consistency is useful, because it caps how much of a Korean memory boom can possibly show up in their results.
The direction matters more than the level. Applied’s Korea revenue was 1,572 million dollars against 1,562 million a year before — up 0.6 per cent in dollars, while China and Taiwan absorbed the company’s growth. Tokyo Electron’s Korea revenue rose 72.6 per cent year on year in yen but fell 12 per cent from the March quarter, so its Korean peak is already behind it on a quarterly view. ASML does not disclose a Korea figure in its quarterly material at all, which is worth knowing before you read a Korea number attributed to it.
Memory is also a minority of equipment revenue wherever the companies break it out. ASML put memory at 49 per cent of net system sales, which is about 35 per cent of total revenue once you add service. Applied put DRAM at 29 per cent and flash at 4 per cent of Semiconductor Systems, so 33 per cent of a segment that is itself three quarters of the company — call it a quarter of revenue. Tokyo Electron put DRAM at 32 per cent and non-volatile memory at 11 per cent of new equipment sales. Lam did not disclose its memory mix this quarter.
The margin gap is the answer, and it is not close
Put the two groups side by side on the same measure and the question mostly answers itself. In their most recent reported quarters the memory makers earned operating margins of 70 to 80 per cent. The equipment makers earned 29 to 37. That is not a small premium for cyclicality; it is a different business model showing up in a single quarter.
The revenue growth gap is wider still. Micron grew revenue 346 per cent year on year, SK hynix 257 per cent. The equipment makers grew 11 to 33 per cent. You are comparing companies that sell into a price spike with companies that sell into a construction schedule, and only one of those two things moves fast.
Most recent reported quarter, company-filed figures only
Memory makers earned two to three times the operating margin of the companies that equip them
| Company | Quarter | Operating margin | Revenue growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Micron | FQ3 2026, to 28 May | 80.4% | +346% |
| SK hynix | 2Q 2026, to 30 Jun | 76% | +257% |
| Samsung Electronics, DS division | Q2 2026, to 30 Jun | 70.0% (derived) | +56% QoQ sales |
| Lam Research | To 28 Jun 2026 | 37.4% | +30% |
| ASML | Q2 2026, to 28 Jun | 37.1% | +21% |
| Applied Materials | Q2 FY2026, to 26 Apr | 31.9% | +11% |
| Tokyo Electron | Q1 FY2027, to 30 Jun | 28.9% | +33% |
Samsung’s 70.0 per cent is ours, derived from the 89.2 trillion won operating profit and 127.5 trillion won revenue it reported for the DS division; Samsung does not print the percentage. SK hynix states its 76 per cent. Growth rates are year on year except Samsung, which discloses a quarter-on-quarter sales change for the division. The quarters do not align exactly, which is a limit on the comparison rather than a reason to avoid it.
The building comes first, and the money follows the tools
The lag has a physical cause, and the parties involved describe it themselves. SK hynix approved about 5.3 trillion won for the M15X building in Cheongju and said total investment in the site would exceed 20 trillion won in the long term, with equipment investment planned to increase gradually. Read those two numbers together: the shell is roughly a quarter of the money, and the rest arrives later, tool by tool.
Lam Research described the same sequence from the other side of the invoice. Customers have announced multi-year fab timelines and are “working with us to secure equipment orders to fill the incremental clean room space as it comes online,” it told analysts in July. The Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan was blunter about what had held output back. It raised its fiscal 2027 forecast because the new fab buildings that had been the bottleneck are now finishing in sequence, so customers can finally move tools in on the delivery schedule they asked for.
This is why the clean room dates matter more than the headline capex totals. When we counted what Samsung and SK hynix have actually committed to 2028, every dated target in the Korean announcements was a clean room date, not a production date, and the earliest was February 2027. Equipment revenue sits between those two dates. ASML, meanwhile, says it is close to fully covered by orders for 2027 Low NA EUV, which tells you the orders exist and tells you nothing about which quarter they become someone’s profit.
One Korean supplier has already reported the June quarter
Wonik IPS is the closest listed proxy for Korean memory capex, and it is the only one of the three suppliers most often named in this debate that has reported the June quarter. On 6 August 2026 it disclosed revenue of 216.5 billion won, down 10.6 per cent year on year, and operating profit of 18.4 billion won, down 49.5 per cent. That is an 8.5 per cent operating margin in the same three months that its two largest customers earned 76 and roughly 70 per cent.
The longer record is harder still. On the company’s own figures, its peak revenue year remains 2021, at 1,232 billion won, before this AI cycle began. Revenue in 2025 was 910 billion won, a quarter below that peak, at an 8.1 per cent operating margin against 13.3 per cent in 2021. A memory supercycle has so far not restored the business to where it stood five years ago.
The counter-example, at full strength
Do not read one filing as a sector verdict. EO Technics reported March-quarter revenue of 115.1 billion won and operating profit of 29.8 billion won, a 25.9 per cent margin, with operating profit up 105 per cent year on year and up 159 per cent for full-year 2025. TES reported a 22.8 per cent margin for the same March quarter. Both are still a quarter behind Wonik IPS in reporting, so the cleanest comparison does not exist yet. What the filings show is dispersion, not a sector trade — which is the opposite of how most people frame the choice.
On flows rather than fundamentals: the money that chased this cycle in Korea did not go to suppliers. The Financial Services Commission’s own figures put Samsung and SK hynix at 52 per cent of KOSPI market capitalisation by 15 July 2026, up from 34 per cent at the end of 2025, after leveraged single-stock products on those two names launched on 27 May. We wrote the rules explainer when those products arrived, in Korea’s single-stock leverage ETF rules. What happened to that money after the 31 July deposit rule is a separate article, and we are reporting it separately.
Sources
We take facts from these and write our own sentences. Every figure above is a reported actual from a company filing or results release. We link to a document only where we hold the exact address for it; where we do not, we name the filing precisely enough for you to find it. On this subject we also decline to reproduce some material, and we say which and why.
Equipment makers
- ASML, Q2 2026 results and the investor call prepared remarks, 15 July 2026. Source for net sales of 9,326 million euros, a 37.1 per cent operating margin, memory at 49 per cent of net system sales, the statement that DRAM megafab additions “will come online in phases over the coming years,” and 2027 Low NA EUV being close to fully covered by orders. ASML publishes no Korea revenue line in this material.
- Applied Materials, Q2 fiscal 2026 results, 14 May 2026. Source for revenue of 7,910 million dollars, a 31.9 per cent operating margin, DRAM at 29 per cent and flash at 4 per cent of Semiconductor Systems, and Korea revenue of 1,572 million dollars at 20 per cent of the total against 1,562 million and 22 per cent a year earlier. Applied’s next quarter reports on 13 August 2026, after this article.
- Lam Research, results for the quarter ended 28 June 2026, 29 July 2026. Source for revenue of 6,722 million dollars, up 30 per cent, a 37.4 per cent operating margin and Korea at 20 per cent of revenue. Lam did not disclose a memory share of systems revenue in this release. The clean room quote is from the same day’s earnings call; Lam hosts the audio and materials at its quarterly results page and we read the remarks in a third-party transcript, which we flag.
- Tokyo Electron, Q1 FY2027 results summary and investor presentation, 30 July 2026. Source for net sales of 732.3 billion yen, a 28.9 per cent operating margin, DRAM at 32 per cent and non-volatile memory at 11 per cent of new equipment sales, and South Korea at 152.4 billion yen or 20.8 per cent of net sales against 173.1 billion the previous quarter.
Industry association
- Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan, equipment demand forecast for fiscal 2026 to 2028, 2 July 2026. Industry-association document, and a forecast rather than an actual. Cited only for its statement of the mechanism: that new fab buildings had been the bottleneck for output expansion and are now finishing in sequence, letting customers move tools in on the delivery schedule they asked for.
Memory makers
- SK hynix, 2Q26 business results, 29 July 2026. Source for revenue of 79.3187 trillion won, up 257 per cent, and the stated 76 per cent operating margin. SK hynix notes these figures are preliminary and subject to change in audit.
- SK hynix, M15X Cheongju announcement, April 2024. Source for the approximately 5.3 trillion won building investment, the more than 20 trillion won long-term total, and the company’s own description of equipment investment increasing gradually.
- Samsung Electronics, Q2 2026 results, 30 July 2026. Source for DS division revenue of 127.5 trillion won and operating profit of 89.2 trillion won, from which we derive the 70.0 per cent margin, and for the 56 per cent quarter-on-quarter sales increase. Samsung does not disclose a DS geographic or DRAM-versus-NAND split in this release.
- Micron Technology, fiscal Q3 2026 results, filed as Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, 24 June 2026. Source for revenue of 41,456 million dollars, up 346 per cent, and an 80.4 per cent GAAP operating margin.
Korean suppliers and flows
- Wonik IPS, consolidated preliminary results fair disclosure, filed 6 August 2026. Source for second-quarter revenue of 216,472 million won, down 10.6 per cent, and operating profit of 18,383 million won, down 49.5 per cent. The annual series through 2025, including the 1,232,302 million won 2021 peak and the 8.11 per cent 2025 operating margin, is from the company’s own investor relations financial summary. The figures are preliminary and unaudited. We could not confirm the receipt number for the 6 August filing; search DART for the company and the fair disclosure of that date.
- TES, quarterly report for the period ended 31 March 2026, filed 13 May 2026. Source for revenue of 97,243 million won and operating profit of 22,201 million won, from which we derive the 22.8 per cent margin. The year-on-year change for that quarter is not in the summary we read, so we do not print one.
- EO Technics, quarterly report for the period ended 31 March 2026, filed on or about 14 May 2026, and the full-year 2025 results disclosure. Source for revenue of 115,102 million won, operating profit of 29,798 million won and the 105 per cent and 159 per cent operating profit increases. We were not able to open the 2026 filing itself and read these figures against the company’s filed 2025 comparatives, so treat the quarterly line items as high confidence rather than confirmed. Search DART for the company and the quarterly report for March 2026.
- Financial Services Commission, joint measures on single-stock leverage products, 16 July 2026. Source for Samsung and SK hynix rising from 34 per cent of KOSPI market capitalisation at the end of 2025 to 52 per cent by 15 July 2026, and for the 27 May 2026 launch date.
Material we are declining to reproduce
- Shinhan Securities, “Semiconductor Equipment — CapEx Speed Up!” sector report, 6 August 2026. Cited, original not read. This report is the origin of the Korean-language framing of memory shares against equipment shares, and it carries ratings and target prices for six named suppliers. It is distributed through brokerage channels with no public address and we could not open it. We do not reproduce brokerage ratings, target prices or price objectives on this site under any circumstances, and we do not publish stock picks or watchlists. Reproducing a research house’s recommendation table would also substitute its work for ours.
- A correlation coefficient of 0.96 between Korean memory makers’ and front-end equipment makers’ combined market capitalisation since 2011 circulates with this argument. It is a brokerage’s own calculation and we are not printing it, for a reason you can check: neither the Korea Exchange nor the Korea Financial Investment Association publishes a “front-end equipment maker” aggregate. KRX does calculate semiconductor indices and publishes free index and single-stock history through its data portal, but the two baskets that figure requires are hand-built, so no reader can reproduce it from official data.
- Consensus and forecast figures for 2027 supplier revenue growth and combined operating profit growth. Excluded on principle. This article compares reported quarters only, which is why it can be checked.
Corrections
None yet. If you can point to a filing that contradicts anything above, we will correct it and say what changed.
Disclosure. The author holds no position in any company named in this article as of the date of publication. This is general information and analysis about reported financial results in the memory and semiconductor equipment industries. It is not investment advice, not a recommendation to buy or sell any security, and not a valuation or price forecast. Naming a company here is not a recommendation of it, and the comparisons above are of reported margins and growth rates, not of investment merit. The section headed Editor’s opinion is comment, and we fence it off from the sourced material for that reason. We have not tailored anything here to your circumstances, and only a qualified adviser in your jurisdiction can do that. We are not registered as an investment adviser in any jurisdiction, and this site has no commercial relationship with any company, exchange or research provider named above. See the Editorial & Sourcing Policy and Disclaimer.