KIOXIA Holdings (285A) 集团电话会议主要要点

KIOXIA Holdings(285A)| Japan Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities Co., Ltd.+ Kazuo Yoshikawa, CFA Equity AnalystKazuo.Yoshikawa@morganstanleymufg.com +81 3 6836-8408 Key Takeaways from Our GroupCall Hidetaka SuzukiResearch AssociateHidetaka.Suzuki@morganstanleymufg.com+81 3 6836-8402 We reiterate OW. Product offerings continue to expand toaddress diverse AI inference use cases. Key Takeaways KIOXIA plans to offer CM, GP, and LC-series SSDs to address diverse AI inferenceneeds. Japan Semiconductors|Japan Stock RatingOverweightIndustry ViewIn-LinePrice target¥110,000Up/downside to price target (%)41Shr price, close (Jun 5, 2026)¥78,140Mkt cap, curr, basic (bn)¥42,671.2Div yld (03/27e) (%)2.3 BiCS-10 sample shipments are expected to begin around this summer, withvolume production planned about one year later, subject to market conditions. The company appears to aim to cover roughly 50% of its CY28 shipment volumethrough LTAs, while maintaining a certain degree of flexibility. We had a follow-up group call with KIOXIA Holdings following its Investor Dayheld on June 2:Key comments from the company are summarized below. Application mix: KIOXIA plans to raise the revenue mix of products for the datacenter and enterprise markets from the current 30–40% to over 60% over themedium term. The company also aims to improve profitability by achieving strongermarket fit for value-added products such as Super High IOPS SSDs.That said,profitability gaps between data center/enterprise products and consumer productsappear to have narrowed, as price increases have also progressed in consumer areassuch as PC & client SSDs and smart devices. NAND flash market outlook: At the Investor Day, KIOXIA presented TechInsights’forecast, which is broadly in line with its own view, showing an EB CAGR of 22%from 2025 to 2028. This outlook assumes supply constraints, and actual demandcould be stronger.While ASPs are difficult to forecast, the company appears toexpect solid ASPs could continue through 2H26 and 2027, supported by tightsupply-demand conditions. Capex plan:KIOXIA set its average annual capex plan for FY3/27–3/29 at ¥470bn.This represents a slight increase from its FY3/27 capex guidance of ¥450bn.However, FY3/27 capex is weighted toward the 2H, and the three-year capex cycle isexpected to increase from 2H FY3/27. The three-year investment plan includes notonly production equipment investment, but also medium- to long-term investmentsto secure upside flexibility through additional space capacity, including investmentsbeyond Fab 7 at Yokkaichi and Fab 2 at Kitakami factory. Morgan Stanley does and seeks to do business withcompanies covered in Morgan Stanley Research. As a result,investors should be aware that the firm may have a conflict ofinterest that could affect the objectivity of Morgan StanleyResearch. Investors should consider Morgan StanleyResearch as only a single factor in making their investmentdecision. For analyst certification and other important disclosures,refer to the Disclosure Section, located at the end of thisreport. KIOXIA’s SSD product portfolio for AI:Various inference AI solutions are beingproposed, mainly by NVIDIA (covered by our US semiconductor analyst JosephMoore), and SSDs play an important role in these systems. KIOXIA plans to roll outproducts that address these emerging applications. += Analysts employed by non-U.S. affiliates are not registeredwith FINRA, may not be associated persons of the memberand may not be subject to FINRA restrictions oncommunications with a subject company, public appearancesand trading securities held by a research analyst account. KIOXIA CM Seriesis a high-bandwidth SSD equipped with TLC flash memory. As agenticAI advances, inference systems increasingly require high-throughput and low-latencystorage, not merely as auxiliary storage but effectively as part of the memory hierarchy.The CM Series is designed for such KV cache applications. Products supporting KV cachefor NVIDIA are expected to begin shipping in 2026. KIOXIA GP Seriesis a Super High IOPS SSD designed for direct integration with GPUs andcompatible with NVIDIA Storage-Next. By combining a dedicated SoC with XL-FLASH, itenables next-generation AI processing of over 100M IOPS and low latency, allowing SSDsto be used as an extension or complement to HBM. KIOXIA plans to ship the first-generation product using SLC chips in 2026, followed by a second-generation productcapable of 100M IOPS in 2027. KIOXIA LC Seriesis a high-capacity SSD equipped with QLC flash memory. It uses BiCS-82Tb QLC and achieves a capacity of 245TB, meeting demand for large-scale data storage instorage servers. Customer qualifications are progressing smoothly, including adoption inDell Technologies’ (covered by our US IT hardware analyst Erik Woodring) PowerEdgeR7725xd server and mass-production shipments have started. BiCS FLASH technology roadmap: BiCS-8 is ramping mass production across a number ofprojects and is expected