Samsung's board has approved a 2026 shareholder return plan worth up to 110 trillion won, roughly $80 billion, and the real message is blunt: AI memory is now throwing off enough cash to make even a Korean record look conservative.
Samsung Electronics put a huge number in front of investors on August 21. The board approved a 2026 return plan estimated at 90 trillion to 110 trillion won, the largest ever by a Korean company, according to Samsung's own announcement. About 30 trillion won is expected to go out as cash dividends in the third quarter, with the details due at an October board meeting.
That is serious money. It is about five times Samsung's previous high of 20.3 trillion won in 2020. The company also approved a separate 15 trillion won share buyback for employee stock-based compensation, according to its public disclosure. You don't need to dress this up. The AI memory boom has moved from earnings calls into cash payments.
The policy behind the payout is not new. Samsung's 2024 to 2026 shareholder return plan commits the company to returning 50% of free cash flow, with regular annual dividends of about 9.8 trillion won. What's changed is the size of the cash pile now sitting behind that promise. Memory prices have recovered sharply, high bandwidth memory is tied directly to AI server demand, and Samsung is trying to show investors that the chip cycle is not only enriching suppliers on paper.
The stock reaction still tells you something useful. Seoul Economic Daily reported that Samsung's shares closed the regular session up 3.87% at 281,500 won, then slid in after-hours trading after the filing before recovering part of the move. Kim Minji, a portfolio manager at Must Asset Management, told Bloomberg that some investors had expected returns of as much as 150 trillion won. That explains the odd result: a record announcement, followed by disappointment.
Temasek's first-ever direct bet on Samsung and SK Hynix sent shares soaring Temasek, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, is set to make its first-ever direct investment in Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, sending shares up 6.7% and 5.5% respectively on August 12. The fund cited a valuation gap between the Korean memory chipmakers and AI darlings like TSMC and Micron. - Temasek investment in Samsung Electronics - SK Hynix stock price surge
Frankly, that disappointment is not irrational. Samsung has put a range on the table, but it has not yet told investors how much of the remaining return will come through dividends and how much through buybacks and cancellations. Those are not the same thing. A dividend pays you once. A cancelled share changes the share count for everyone left.
The cash pile is real #
Samsung has already been cleaning up the balance sheet. ZDNet Korea reported, citing Samsung's semiannual report, that the company fully repaid the 20 trillion won it borrowed from Samsung Display during the 2023 semiconductor downturn. The first 10 trillion won repayment came on April 23, and the rest was repaid later in the second quarter.
That loan was not a small footnote. Samsung borrowed the money in 2023, when its chip division was under heavy pressure and memory demand had collapsed. Now the balance is gone. Cash and short-term financial products rose from about 125.8 trillion won at the end of last year to about 190 trillion won at the end of June, according to the same filing cited by ZDNet Korea.
Debt paid down. Cash piled up. Shareholders noticed.
Samsung is also still spending where it has to. Asan city said in July that Samsung Electronics and local officials had signed an agreement tied to an HBM expansion at the Onyang site, with construction expected in October and mass production targeted for May 2029. The new clean room is planned at about 31,000 square meters. That matters because Onyang is not a symbol. It is part of Samsung's answer to SK Hynix in the packaging and production work that makes HBM useful for AI servers.
SK Hynix set the pace #
SK Hynix moved first. On August 19, the company said its board had approved a 40 trillion won share repurchase and cancellation plan, with purchases scheduled to start August 20 and run for about three months. Based on the previous closing price, SK Hynix said that would cover about 24.07 million shares, or 3.3% of total issued shares.
That is the cleaner version of a shareholder return. SK Hynix is buying the shares and cancelling them. It also said it would lift its return target to more than 50% of cumulative free cash flow for the 2025 to 2027 program period. You can see why Samsung's investors are asking about the split.
South Korea's Kospi surged 17.9% on July 31, 2026, its largest single-day gain in history, completely reversing a brutal week of AI-driven selling after Microsoft's blowout Q4 results validated AI infrastructure spending. Samsung Electronics jumped 28% and SK Hynix hit its 30% daily limit as memory-chip demand fears evaporated overnight. - Kospi biggest single day gain record - Microsoft Azure earnings calm market panic
The operating numbers explain why both companies can even have this argument. SK Hynix reported second-quarter operating profit of 60.5426 trillion won, up 557% from a year earlier, on revenue of 79.3187 trillion won. The company pointed to high-value products, including HBM, AI server DRAM and enterprise SSDs. This is not a vague AI premium. It is showing up in product mix, margins and cash.
Samsung's plan is still the larger headline. SK Hynix's plan is the sharper signal. One gives you a record range. The other tells you exactly what happens to the shares.
That is the question Samsung still has to answer in January 2027, when the board is due to finalize the remaining return after 2026 performance is confirmed. Until then, investors have a record number, a huge dividend coming in the third quarter, and a live argument over whether Samsung is being generous enough with a windfall it could not have imagined during the 2023 memory slump.
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