The South Korean company has suffered weak revenue and share price declines in recent quarters after lagging behind competitors in advanced memory chips and contract chip manufacturing, which has a lot of demand for AI projects.
A 65-year-old shareholder told his last name before the meeting.
“They should go all out, in the memory chip business, where they can do well, or do something to the foundry,” he said.
At the internal meeting, Samsung admitted that it had lost its stance. This is especially true in semiconductors, where it lags behind SK Hynix in high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips that NVIDIA and others rely on AI graphics processing units.
“Our technological advantages are hurt in all of our businesses,” Chairman Jay Y. “It’s hard to see a hard time seeing a big innovation push or deal with new challenges. It’s just about working to keep things going instead of rocking things.” Samsung co-CEO Han Xi told investors on Wednesday that 2025 will be a tough year as uncertainty over economic policies around major economies, Samsung will pursue “meaningful” mergers and acquisitions and try to achieve tangible achievements. Last year, Samsung’s stock fell nearly a third, while SK Hynix’s stock climbed 26%. In recent years, Samsung has also lost market share in contract chip manufacturing with TSMC and Apple and Chinese competitors in smartphones.
Samsung launched a stock buyback program worth 100 trillion won ($7.2 billion) in November, and its shares fell to a low of more than four years. Since then, its stock has risen 7%.
Samsung is the most valuable company in South Korea with a market capitalization of US$235 billion, accounting for 16% of the country’s total value of major hotels. According to market data, nearly 40% of South Korean stock investors own Samsung shares.
