Cracks Emerge in NAND Price Increases: South Korea’s Export Unit Value Falls for the First Time in Nearly 10 Months—Why Is SSD Still Strengthening?
目录
TL;DR
1. Bottom Line First: Prices Have Indeed Begun to Ease, but the Easing Is Occurring at a Specific Layer
2. What the Official July Report Said—and What It Did Not Say
3. Why the “First Decline in Nearly 10 Months” Matters More Than the One-Month Drop
4. Product Mix Is Not an Excuse, but It Remains a Variable That Must Be Controlled
5. The Divergence Between NAND and SSDs Is Mapping the Direction of Profit-Pool Migration
6. The 4 Types of “Price” Must Be Separated, or the Conclusion Will Inevitably Be Wrong
7. Decomposing Unit Value: Is Price, Mix, or Timing Moving?
8. Three Scenarios: How to Assess the Market After July
9. Implications for Major Companies
10. Four Gates Between Export Prices and the Income Statement
11. The 5 Most Important Validation Points for August
12. Final Assessment: The Upcycle Is Not Over, but Broad-Based Gains Are
本内容基于公开资料和研报数据整理，不构成任何投资建议，不代表任何个人观点，仅供学习参考，请理性阅读
South Korea’s July data have exposed the first crack in the narrative of broad-based NAND price increases: upstream realized export prices weakened, while enterprise SSDs continued to capture the profit pool. The cycle has not reversed, but the way it should be validated has changed.
TL;DR
This decline warrants attention. In the Korea Customs Service’s final monthly data, NAND export unit value rose for 9 consecutive months from October 2025 through June 2026, reaching approximately US$62,115/kg in June. The secondary provisional series for July shows unit value turning lower, the first monthly decline since September 2025. The product mix has been changing throughout, yet it did not prevent the preceding consecutive increases; this inflection therefore cannot be dismissed simply as “mix changes.”
But it does not yet represent broad-based NAND price declines. South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources reported in July that the fixed price of NAND 128Gb still rose from US$28.8 in June to US$30.1 in July. Export unit value is calculated as export value divided by weight and is affected by die density, packaging, customers, destinations, and shipment timing; it cannot be equated with ASP per bit or market-wide contract prices.
SSD remains the strong segment. Official July SSD exports totaled US$4.512 billion, up 500.2% YoY. Although this was approximately 12.5% below June’s US$5.158 billion, enterprise SSD demand was still officially identified as the core driver of computer export growth. Secondary provisional data also show SSD unit value rising, indicating that the profit pool continues to concentrate in controllers, firmware, qualification, and high-capacity enterprise products.
The most reasonable conclusion is “marginal easing plus structural divergence.” Realized export prices for raw NAND or lower-value-added products may be easing first, while enterprise SSDs and higher-value-added portfolios retain pricing power. The industry is shifting from “all NAND prices rise together” to “vendors with high-quality customers and product portfolios retain pricing power.”
Investors need to change the metrics they track. Going forward, it is no longer sufficient to monitor only average NAND prices. Investors must also track final shipment weight from the Korea Customs Service, enterprise SSD capacity shipments, NAND wafer spot and contract prices, binding long-term agreement terms, and manufacturers’ NAND ASP/bit and gross margins. Only if unit value declines again in August and SSD also weakens would the evidence begin to point toward a broader cyclical inflection.
The base case remains positive, but the margin for error has narrowed. The July data have not invalidated demand from AI servers and data-center storage; the real change is that the straightforward price-increase trade has entered its verification phase. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have DRAM/HBM buffers, while higher-beta NAND names such as SanDisk and Kioxia increasingly need to demonstrate through enterprise SSD share, long-term agreements, and cash flow that peak profits can be retained.
1. Bottom Line First: Prices Have Indeed Begun to Ease, but the Easing Is Occurring at a Specific Layer
Reduced to one sentence, our view is: the decline in South Korea’s NAND export unit value in July can reasonably be interpreted as marginal easing in upstream realized export prices, but the available evidence does not yet support the conclusion that NAND prices have reversed across the entire market.
These two conclusions are not contradictory. NAND does not have a single price. Manufacturers sell raw wafers, packaged dies, embedded storage, and enterprise SSDs, each involving different customers, contract durations, capacities, performance, controllers, and qualification costs. South Korea’s export unit value, calculated as value divided by weight, most closely resembles a blended realized price; the NAND 128Gb fixed price published by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources tracks standard-product pricing; NAND ASP/bit reported in company earnings represents another layer. All three price curves can move in different directions during the same month.
July warrants a deep-dive report because this negative reading interrupted an exceptionally strong trend. Final monthly data for Korea Customs Service HS10 item 8542321030 show that, after NAND export unit value fell 11.6% MoM in September 2025, it rose continuously from October 2025 through June 2026. Export destinations, density, packaging, and customer mix could not possibly have remained unchanged during this period, yet unit value still increased for 9 consecutive months. In July, the secondary provisional series showed a decline for the first time, indicating that although “mix changes” remain an explanatory variable, they are no longer sufficient to reduce the probability of price easing to zero.
This signal should be added to the counterevidence checklist and assigned meaningful weight. Its correct label, however, is “marginal easing in realized export prices,” not “an across-the-board decline in industry ASP.”
2. What the Official July Report Said—and What It Did Not Say
South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources released its July 2026 Export and Import Trends report on August 1, based on provisional Korea Customs Service clearance data through July 31. South Korea’s July exports totaled US$98.89 billion, up 62.8% YoY; semiconductor exports totaled US$41.01 billion, up 178.8% YoY, remaining above US$40 billion after setting a record in June. Computer exports totaled US$4.79 billion, up 404.0% YoY, including SSD exports of US$4.512 billion, up 500.2% YoY.
The official characterization of memory remained strong. The fixed price of DDR5 16Gb rose from US$31.0 in March to US$35.0 in April, US$37.5 in May, US$40.0 in June, and US$45.0 in July; the fixed price of NAND 128Gb rose from US$17.7 to US$24.2, US$26.5, US$28.8, and US$30.1. The report also explicitly stated that major global technology companies continued to expand AI infrastructure investment, enterprise SSD demand increased, and computer exports had recorded triple-digit YoY growth for 6 consecutive months.
The report did not directly disclose July NAND export weight or unit value per kilogram. It also cautioned that explanations covering major regions and subcategories largely used data from July 1–25, with July 26–31 not yet fully reflected; the Korea Customs Service is expected to publish final July subcategory data around August 15, while annual statistics may still be revised through February 2027. Accordingly, the most reliable evidence hierarchy at this stage is as follows: the official report confirms aggregate volumes, SSD export value, and standard-product fixed prices; the decline in July NAND unit value is derived from a secondary provisional calculation of detailed customs data and awaits verification against the Korea Customs Service’s final monthly breakdown.
3. Why the “First Decline in Nearly 10 Months” Matters More Than the One-Month Drop
The trend in South Korea’s NAND export unit value has been exceptionally steep. It stood at only approximately US$11,921/kg in July 2025 and had risen to approximately US$62,115/kg by June 2026, a cumulative increase of approximately 4.2x over 11 months. More importantly, the increase was uninterrupted: there was no monthly decline from October 2025 through June 2026.
