The Wall Street Journal’s June 2 Market Talks roundups detailed a series of cross-sector moves driven by the AI infrastructure buildout, geopolitical uncertainty, and M&A speculation. Taiwan-based research firm TrendForce said the top three memory-chip manufacturers — Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron — are likely to sharply increase prices for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in AI computing for 2027, as surging prices for standard memory have temporarily made locked-in HBM contracts less profitable. TrendForce predicted that massive growth driven by products such as Google’s upgraded AI chips and Nvidia’s Rubin series will see HBM consume about 30% of the three firms’ DRAM manufacturing capacity by late 2027, shrinking standard memory supplies and boosting pricing power.
Goldman Sachs analysts raised their annual operating profit forecasts for Samsung Electronics, the world’s top memory-chip maker, by 5.3% to 374 trillion won for 2026, 21% to 530 trillion won for 2027, and 23% to 610 trillion won for 2028. The analysts projected sustained solid long-term growth in memory demand driven by AI, forecasting global demand for DRAM and NAND products to grow 28% and 23% respectively this year, outpacing supply growth of 23% and 19%.
In the airline sector, easyJet shares rose 9.8% to 437.10 pence after investment firm Castlelake said any takeover offer for the budget carrier would value it at least $4.12 billion. AJ Bell analyst Dan Coatsworth said a bid is the last thing easyJet’s management wants, given they are already navigating a weak market backdrop and concerns about post-summer fuel shortages. With shares having jumped no more than 12% on the news, the market doesn’t believe a bid will succeed, Coatsworth said. Bank of America Global Research analysts estimated that easyJet’s owned aircraft are worth around 6.5 pounds per share, significantly higher than the current share price, with the carrier’s firm order backlog of 287 Airbus A320/A321 aircraft through fiscal 2034 representing further value upside. If Castlelake were to acquire easyJet primarily for its fleet, the likely consequence would be further consolidation in the European short-haul market, the analysts said.
Shares of London-listed airlines Jet2 and Wizz Air rose 3.1% and 1.3% respectively following the easyJet news. RBC Capital Markets analyst Ruairi Cullinane said Jet2 appears to be the most attractively valued company in the bank’s airline and travel coverage by earnings and asset-based measures, and said he wouldn’t rule out the possibility it could become a takeover target.
Meanwhile, Nvidia’s latest PC chip, developed with MediaTek, signals that the AI trade is moving beyond graphics processing units into the full computing stack, Saxo Markets analyst Charu Chanana said. The next phase of AI is likely to be about the full stack needed to scale AI — from CPU, GPU, memory to networking and servers — meaning the beneficiary list is expanding, Chanana said. Arm is the architecture beneficiary, Microsoft is the Windows AI gatekeeper, and companies like Broadcom and Marvell work on the networking layer, she added. Citi analysts said Nvidia’s announcements should be positive for Chinese supply-chain players including Foxconn Industrial Internet, Victory Giant Technology and WUS Printed Circuit, while Lenovo stands to benefit from the new GPU server platform and Nvidia chip-powered laptops.
Chinese optical communication stocks rose sharply amid the AI boom, the roundup reported. Zhongji Innolight and Eoptolink Technology, which make high-speed optical modules, were up 6.1% and 9.35% respectively on the ChiNext board, while Yuanjie Semiconductor, which makes laser and photonic chips for data transmission, rose 14% in Shanghai.
In digital assets, bitcoin fell 1.6% to as low as $69,961, a near two-month low, after Strategy said it sold 32 bitcoin last week for about $2.5 million, its first sale since 2022. Trade Nation analyst David Morrison said sentiment toward bitcoin has soured quite rapidly. Bitcoin showed resilience during the first 10 weeks of the Iran war, but investors now appear frustrated with the slow progress toward resolving the conflict, Morrison said.
In other analyst coverage from the roundup, Nomura analysts maintained a neutral rating on Meituan, noting its food-delivery business turned profitable in March and management expects it to break even in the second quarter. Japanese movie studio Toho plans to raise adult ticket prices by up to 10% starting July, the first increase since June 2023. Prosus shares rose 10.5% as the Amsterdam-listed technology investor weighs options to potentially block Uber from buying German food-delivery company Delivery Hero. India’s data-center industry is poised to grow to around 7 gigawatts at a compound annual rate exceeding 30% through 2030, Nomura analysts estimated, representing a capital-expenditure opportunity of $35 billion.
Going deeper: Read MSI’s analysis of AI memory pricing and sector capital reallocation →