Team Group CEO: memory shortage runs through mid-2027, prices stay high

Gerry Chen, CEO of Taiwanese memory maker Team Group, used his company's Nov. 2 earnings call to deliver a blunt forecast: the tightest stretch of the global memory chip shortage will run through the end of the second quarter of 2027. He told investors he sees no downward price trend at all next year, and does not expect supply and demand to balance until the second half of 2028 at the earliest, according to BigGo Finance. His summary of the market was just as direct: even money can't buy goods.

That warning arrived next to record results. Third-quarter revenue reached NT$10.14 billion, or approximately $311 million, up 33.6% from the previous quarter. Gross margin climbed to 49.3% and earnings per share came in at NT$37.19. The buyer mix shifted hard, too: business-to-business and AI customers made up 64.6% of revenue, versus 24.6% a year earlier.

The pricing data backs the gloomy outlook. Contract prices for DDR5 16Gb chips stood at $48 in September 2026, versus $8.70 in October 2025, while spot prices trade at a 30% to 50% premium above contract. Team Group has had to buy some memory components on that spot market, paying the premium itself.

The cause sits upstream. Major DRAM and NAND producers have steered production capacity toward high-bandwidth memory, the stacked chips that sit beside AI accelerators in data centers, and toward premium DDR5. Every wafer aimed at HBM is a wafer not making standard parts, so output of mainstream products like DDR4 has dropped, with significant cuts expected in the coming years.

Team Group's response is to add assembly capacity, planning a new facility that lifts production by roughly 50%. That does not fix the underlying chip supply, since a bigger factory still needs chips to put inside modules. Buyers without long-term contracts locked in at older prices are the exposed side, while Chen's own company is selling into the scarcity he's describing. The dates to watch are the end of Q2 2027, when he expects the worst to ease, and the second half of 2028, his earliest call for balance.