Samsung Electronics has made a deal with Samsung Display Co. (SDC) to give it a loan of 20 trillion won ($16 billion) at an interest rate of 4.6%, according to Bloomberg.
Samsung had already indicated that it would not relent on capex spending this year, despite the downturn, and that the company saw this year as an opportunity to work on future technologies in anticipation of a market bounce back to norms in 2024.
DSCC had downgraded its 2023 display equipment spending to the lowest level since 2012. $16 billion going out of SDC certainly means that company is going to be in a holding pattern for the next two years to some extent because Samsung Electronics is shifting emphasis to other areas, probably in anticipation of an all out attack on the memory and semiconductor markets in mobile and automotive. That could mean a push on server chips as AI/ML applications are probably the safest bets for growth in 2023. And, of course, there is investment in existing 3 nm and future 2 nm process technologies.
