Speaking at a legal conference on 13 October, Li said customers have been falling over themselves to lock in long-term orders, with the supply-demand gap for DDR4 now “a bit large”. Apparently, this is fuelling what he called a real rebound in the memory market.

He claimed the latest DRAM upturn has been sparked by AI's growing appetite for memory, and a shortage in non-AI markets. Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron have all thrown their production efforts into high-bandwidth memory, DDR5, and whatever DDR6 will become. That’s left DDR4 in short supply, which has conveniently pushed DDR5 prices even higher.

Li noted that DDR4 still makes up about 20 per cent of the global DRAM market, with more than half of that being bog-standard DDR4 and the rest LPDDR4. Since the major OEMs have retooled their kit for newer memory formats, flipping back to DDR4 would involve fresh gear and process tweaks, a hassle few seem keen to take on. That’s where Nanya smells profit.

He pointed out that PCs have been quickest to adopt DDR5, followed by cloud servers. The consumer side, however, is still clinging to DDR4 8Gb parts, with little interest in upgrading anytime soon. Nanya shifts about 10 per cent DDR5 and more than 50 per cent DDR4, with the rest made up of DDR3 and low-power variants.

Li said average unit prices jumped by around 40 per cent in the third quarter and are still climbing in the fourth, although the gains vary across product lines.

Thanks to the rebound, he expects this quarter to go even better than the last. “The degree of grasp is quite high,” he said, forecasting continued improvements in both gross margin and profit.

When asked whether Nanya might claw its way into the black for the full year, Li responded that the company would “continue to work hard.”