After CXMT disclosed its H1 2026 results, one comparison quickly took focus: the domestic DRAM maker's net profit attributable to shareholders reached RMB 77.605 billion, versus SMIC's RMB 4.467 billion in the same period—about 17x higher.
The gap is driven by surging memory chip prices. CXMT's interim report cited rapid global computing demand growth and capacity allocation by major suppliers, which left DRAM products in short supply and drove prices sharply higher, lifting gross margins on its main products. H1 gross margin reached 84.84%, with net operating cash flow of RMB 131.156 billion, up nearly 30x year-over-year.
Revenue comparisons are just as stark. CXMT's H1 revenue was RMB 150.31 billion, up 873.64% year-over-year; SMIC's was RMB 38.635 billion, up 19.4%; Hua Hong Grace's was RMB 9.574 billion, up 19.41%. Both foundries grew around 20%, a sharp contrast to CXMT's nearly 9x jump.
SMIC and Hua Hong Grace are not stagnant. SMIC's net profit rose 94.2% year-over-year, and Hua Hong Grace's jumped 436.69%, driven mainly by higher wafer shipments and average selling prices. But foundry pricing logic differs from memory makers: wafer foundry pricing follows process nodes and capacity utilization with limited elasticity, while DRAM is tied directly to global supply-demand gaps and contract prices, releasing more profit in tight-supply cycles.
CXMT is currently the world's fourth-largest DRAM maker, with about 8% global share in Q1 2026. Its customers include Alibaba Cloud, ByteDance, Tencent, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Honor, OPPO, and vivo, with rising shipments of high-end DDR5 and LPDDR5X, and LPDDR6 already sampling to key customers.
Note that memory profit elasticity cuts both ways. In H1 2025, CXMT posted a RMB 2.332 billion loss; a year later it earned RMB 77.6 billion—a reversal rarely seen in manufacturing. Institutions expect the current DRAM shortage to last until H2 2027, but memory price cyclicality remains a variable hanging over the income statement.
ICgoodFind Summary: CXMT's RMB 77.6 billion profit proves memory makers' pricing power in a supply-demand gap, but the other side of the memory cycle is just as real. For the chip supply chain, understanding profit logic differences across segments matters more than comparing numbers.
