Korea’s Chip ETF After Samsung’s $80 Billion Quarter
EWY is almost half Samsung and SK hynix. That is the attraction, and the risk.
South Korea. Samsung Electronics said on 8 October that it expects third-quarter operating profit of 107.4 trillion won, about $80 billion, on revenue of 195 trillion won. Seoul Economic Daily noted that the figure exceeds Nvidia’s $63.7 billion operating profit for its May–July quarter, the previous big-tech record. Consensus had been 106.1 trillion won, per Reuters figures cited by SiliconANGLE. The driver is a memory shortage: DDR4 8Gb DRAM averaged $26 at quarter-end, against $6.30 a year earlier.
For international investors, the most direct expression is the iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY). It holds 85 stocks, but SK hynix (24.1%) and Samsung (23.5%) make up nearly half, per StockAnalysis. The expense ratio is 0.59% and assets are about $26.2 billion. It closed at $177.24 on 9 October, with a one-year total return of about 115%.
## The case
UBS’s emerging-market strategists kept Korea at overweight in a 2 October note, citing 9.5 times forward earnings against a 12.6 times 10-year average and forecasting 81.1% earnings growth in 2026. Memory is their preferred AI exposure, with DRAM and NAND supply expected to stay tight into 2027 and 2028.
## The risk
Concentration cuts both ways. On 28 July the Kospi fell 10.84%; the next day brought a second consecutive circuit breaker; on 31 July it rebounded 17.91% as Samsung and SK hynix rose nearly 30%, KED Global reported. Regulators have since capped individual exposure to single-stock leveraged ETFs. UBS flags heavy foreign selling, $57.8 billion in the second quarter, and any fall in memory prices. EWY remains below the near-$221 52-week high Yahoo Finance cited in July. Samsung’s full results are due 29 October.
Sources: Seoul Economic Daily, SiliconANGLE, StockAnalysis, KED Global, Yahoo Finance, Exencial (summary of UBS research). This is information, not investment advice.
