BofA expects both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to announce concrete details on shareholder returns. For Samsung specifically, the shareholder return program — utilizing 50% of FCF — would take three main forms: (1) A special dividend of over KRW 30tn to be paid in Q3 or Q4 (2) Share buybacks of over KRW 40tn in 1H 2027 (3) A year-end dividend of KRW 30tn scheduled for payment in April 2027 Separately, there would also be over KRW 30tn in share buybacks for employee compensation. For SK Hynix, BofA likewise expects 50% of FCF to be returned to shareholders, but with greater weight on buybacks than on cash dividends — for example, over KRW 40tn in share buybacks and over KRW 20tn in cash dividends.

BOFA: LOWER-INCOME JOBS, WAGES OUTPACE HIGHER EARNERS Bank of America says the U.S. labor market is moving beyond the "K-shaped" economy. Lower-income households saw 3% YoY job growth in July versus 1% for higher-income workers, while after-tax wage growth reached 5.2%, topping 4.2% for higher-income households for the first time since December 2024. BofA says stronger wage gains, alongside solid productivity growth, support consumer spending without necessarily increasing inflation.

BofA’s Simon Woo: Samsung’s LTAs are structured on supplier-friendly terms, with price declines capped while price increases remain broadly uncapped. For example, QoQ price declines are limited to less than 5%, whereas increases of 10–20% or more are allowed.

BofA’s Vivek Arya made an excellent point, which I’d like to share. Is open-source AI bearish for memory? Closed models amortize global demand across shared HBM pools concentrated in a handful of data centers, whereas open models create a new memory footprint with every deployment. If 10,000 companies self-host the same open model, the model weights must be replicated across 10,000 separate HBM pools, with each deployment also requiring its own KV cache. As 128K–1M token contexts become commonplace in 2026, the KV cache alone can exceed 40GB per active session. Low-cost Chinese APIs drive greater inference demand, broader enterprise self-hosting, and more memory sockets worldwide. In short, closed models concentrate memory demand, while open models multiply it.

BOFA CEO DISMISSES RECESSION FEARS Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said higher interest rates are not a sign of recession but reflect a resilient U.S. economy and the Fed's effort to control inflation. Despite BofA forecasting three Fed rate hikes, Moynihan expects economic growth to remain strong while inflation gradually eases.

BofA Reiterates $NVDA at Buy, PT $320; ER Preview: Analyst comments: "Nvidia reports post-close on Wednesday, May 20, and we expect the usual historical 2–4%/$2–$4 billion sales outperformance relative to current sell-side expectations. However, beyond headlines, we expect the focus to be on: 1) potential for enhanced cash returns; 2) Vera Rubin ramp timing (2H26E); 3) gross margin durability (~75% amid continued memory/other cost inflation); 4) update to the $1 trillion CY25–27 forecast, especially contribution from LPU racks, CPU, and Vera Rubin Ultra, which were not included before; and 5) competitive landscape changes against Google TPU, agentic CPU, and other ASICs. We maintain our Buy rating, top-pick designation, and $320 price objective on the company’s dominance in the fastest-growing tech market and its compelling valuation at <20x CY27E P/E, or only 0.4x PEG relative to 46%+ CY25–28E EPS CAGR. As discussed in our recent note, NVDA’s large existing positioning — 8.3% of the S&P 500 Index and ~78% active fund manager ownership — often acts as a headwind. Other large-cap tech names in the same position have added incremental investors by boosting cash returns and appealing to dividend/income-oriented investors. NVDA hasn’t done this yet, with only 47% of free cash flow from CY22–25 allocated to dividends/buybacks versus peers returning around 80% of free cash flow. NVDA’s investments have instead been diverted to investing in the ecosystem — OpenAI, Anthropic, and tech partners — and have been unfairly, in our view, characterized as circular/vendor financing. Boosting shareholder returns could expand ownership, close NVDA’s valuation gap, and minimize circularity concerns, a second-half catalyst." Analyst: Vivek Arya

BofA Fund Manager Survey in May shows the biggest one-month jump in equity allocation ever (net +13% OW → +50% OW). Cash drops to 3.9% – sell signal triggered. 73% call "long semis" the most crowded trade (up from 24% in April). Bull & Bear Indicator: 7.8 of 8.0. When everyone's in, who's left to buy?

REALITY CHECK: last remaining Bofors case dismissed by the courts. So after 40 years, N0 major political figure or prime accused ever jailed in the Rs 64-crore Bofors pay-off scandal that cost Rajiv Gandhi his govt and haunted the Cong for years. Another ‘feather in the cap’ of our ‘premier’ investigative agency CBI! 😡