Analysts at Mizuho highlighted their favorite semiconductor chip stocks in a note to clients this week, saying that "semi investors tend to like and favor signs of a trough or bottom and that is signaled to be 2024."
The firm stated they remain bullish on memory and HDDs overall and still like Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC), Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU), and Silicon Motion Technology (NASDAQ:SIMO) despite the strong outperformance as of late.
The firm continues "to see robust and improving fundamentals in NAND and SSD pricing that can drive GMs upward through rest of year for WDC, SIMO and MU."
It's "important to note that MU is by far the most owned and liked of the three and is much more a pure play name on HBM / gen AI. WDC and SIMO are NAND flash pricing and SSD beneficiaries and less owned and liked vs MU," they added.
Mizuho noted a recent article that claimed Samsung could raise SSD pricing as much as 25% quarter-on-quarter in the second quarter, and that strong demand and lack of supply could result in an "out of stock" situation in SSDs for Samsung.
"That would be very good for MU and WDC and SIMO in terms of ASPs for their businesses," added Mizuho. "MU is a big suppliers of SSDs and WDC is as well but also benefits from being a large NAND memory supplier. SIMO plays in NAND flash controllers that go into smartphones, notebook SSDs and enterprise SSDs. They benefit as pricing rises."