Economic Observer reporter Zheng Chenye

On July 3rd, A-share storage module leader Jiangbolong (301308. SZ) released its 2026 semi annual performance forecast.

According to the announcement data, Jiangbolong expects a net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company in the first half of the year of 9.2 billion to 11 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 62204% to 74394%. During the same period last year, Jiangbolong's net profit was 14.7663 million yuan. Compared with the net profit of 1.423 billion yuan for the whole year of 2025, the growth rate of performance can be better seen: based on the upper limit of performance forecast, Jiangbolong earned 7.7 times the full year of 2025 in the first half of 2026.

The announcement data also shows that Jiangbolong's expected operating revenue for the first half of 2026 is between 22 billion and 25 billion yuan, compared to 10.196 billion yuan in the same period last year, a year-on-year increase of about 116% to 145%; In the first half of 2026, it is expected that the net profit after deducting non recurring gains and losses will be between 9 billion and 10.5 billion yuan.

Jiangbolong attributed the performance growth to two aspects in the announcement: firstly, the increase in downstream demand coupled with limited overall growth in global storage wafer capacity, and the industry is in a high cycle of prosperity; Secondly, the company has renewed wafer supply agreements (LTAs) and memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with multiple major global storage wafer factories, ensuring upstream wafer supply.

On July 1st, two days ago, an investor asked the company's secretary on the Interactive Easy platform of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange: The company's stock price has been significantly weaker than similar companies recently, is there any undisclosed adverse information? The secretary of the board replied that the company's production and operation are normal, and there is no significant information that should be disclosed but has not been disclosed.

On July 2nd, the A-share technology sector underwent a collective adjustment, with Jiangbolong falling more than 10% that day. On July 3rd, Jiangbolong closed at 618.02 yuan per share, up 3.14% that day, with a total market value of 261.5 billion yuan.

Fierce Performance

Prior to the release of this semi annual performance forecast, Jiangbolong had already announced impressive first quarter results for 2026.

In the first quarter of 2026, the company's revenue was 9.909 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 132.79%; Net profit was 3.862 billion yuan, with a loss of 152 million yuan in the first quarter of last year, turning losses into profits year-on-year. The net profit for a single quarter reached 2.71 times the annual total of 1.423 billion yuan in 2025, with a gross profit margin of 55.53%, the highest level since the company made public financial disclosures.

According to the forecast for the first half of the year, the company's net profit for the second quarter is estimated to be between 5.3 billion yuan and 7.1 billion yuan, representing a month on month increase of 38% to 84%. The profit scale and growth rate in the second quarter were significantly higher than those in the first quarter.

In fact, in 2025, Jiangbolong's business situation is already in a slow recovery stage - the annual revenue is 22.766 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.36%; Net profit was 1.423 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 185.41%. Among them, the enterprise level storage business generated a revenue of 1.783 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 93.30%, making it the fastest-growing sector. Lexar, a consumer storage brand under its umbrella, achieved a global sales revenue of 4.741 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 34.53%.

From a steady recovery in 2025 to a sharp increase in profits in the first half of 2026, Jiangbolong's business performance is directly related to the overall prosperity of the storage industry.

Jiangbolong is in the middle of the storage industry chain, purchasing storage wafers from upstream original factories (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, etc.), relying on self-developed main control chips and firmware algorithms to complete packaging testing and product design, and then supplying to downstream end customers. The company's products cover consumer level, enterprise level, vehicle specification level and industry specification level storage, and its customers cover smartphone manufacturers, PC brand manufacturers, Internet enterprises and automobile manufacturers.

The company's 2025 annual report shows that enterprise level storage business is becoming a new growth pole. In 2025, enterprise storage products have been introduced into the supply chain system of some leading Internet enterprises and server manufacturers. The annual revenue of this business segment is 1.783 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 93.30%. Driven by AI servers and data centers, the shipment volume and unit price of enterprise level storage are increasing.

During the storage price increase cycle, midstream manufacturers benefit from both the increase in product prices and the cost advantage brought by previously purchased inventory at lower prices, and their profit elasticity is often greater than that of upstream original factories.

Jiangbolong also mentioned the progress in technology in this performance forecast.

The company's self-developed SPU main control chip and HLC software architecture (a storage software solution that can reduce the memory usage of terminal devices) are supporting the storage requirements of end-to-end AI (running AI functions directly on terminal devices such as mobile phones and PCs). The company has also completed joint optimization with AMD, and the SSD storage solution equipped with HLC technology can reduce the DRAM usage of end side AI products by about 40%.

Jiangbolong is also one of the few companies in the world with the ability to independently develop UFS 4.1 (the highest specification storage standard currently used in flagship smartphones) main control chips. According to its 2025 annual report, UFS 4.1 products equipped with self-developed main control chips have entered the supply chain systems of several leading smartphone manufacturers, and are expected to enter the stage of large-scale production by 2026.

Expanding production is' too urgent '

The explosive performance of Jiangbolong is closely related to the supply and demand pattern of the entire storage industry.

Wang Yuqi, an analyst at renowned semiconductor market research firm Jibang Consulting, told Economic Observer reporters that the delivery cycle of core production equipment in the storage industry is currently as long as 12 months, and the release scale of new production capacity in the industry is limited. The new round of concentrated release of large-scale production capacity is expected to take place from the second half of 2027 to 2028.

Prior to this, the pattern of supply exceeding demand is likely to continue.

Wang Yuqi believes that the entire storage market will still be in a shortage state before 2027. The expansion of upstream original factories requires multiple stages such as equipment in place, process debugging, and capacity ramp up, and the cycle is difficult to compress.

The core driving force behind the high demand for storage comes from the construction of AI infrastructure.

Gong Mingde, research manager of Jibang Consulting, told reporters that in terms of chip types, Nvidia GPU still holds about 64% of the AI chip market share, but the proportion of ASIC chips (specialized chips customized for specific AI tasks) developed by various cloud manufacturers has risen to around 27%. Google is the fastest-growing among them, with its self-developed TPU chip shipments increasing by over 70% year-on-year in 2026.

Both GPU and ASIC solutions require a large amount of memory and storage support, which is the fundamental reason why the storage industry can continue to benefit from AI infrastructure construction.

On the supply side, Wang Yuqi told reporters that the production capacity planning of upstream original factories is tilting towards AI servers, and the share of wafers that can be allocated to traditional applications such as consumer electronics is decreasing.

In this situation, for midstream manufacturers like Jiangbolong, the importance of locking in supply agreements with the original factory in advance has been further amplified in this cycle. Jiang Bolong also emphasized in the announcement that the company has renewed LTA and MOU with several major global original factories, which means that in an environment of tight supply, the company can continue to obtain wafers at relatively controllable costs.

It should be noted that Jiangbolong's inventory at the end of the first quarter was 17.96 billion yuan, and its operating cash flow was -2.875 billion yuan. The asset liability ratio increased by 5.6 percentage points compared to the same period last year to 65.55%.

Increasing stocking during price cycles is a common practice in the storage industry, but the industry's experience over the past few decades has also shown that once the supply and demand relationship reverses, high inventory often shifts from a source of profit to impairment pressure.