Huatai Securities: The room for further upside in South Korea's export growth may be limited.

Huatai Securities research report points out that the high prosperity of the AI chain and quarter-end shipments jointly drove South Korea's September exports to climb to 83.5% year-on-year, with average daily exports growing 104.7% year-on-year; among them, the narrow AI chain contributed about 90% of export growth, while non-AI chain exports also recovered somewhat compared with August. The strong exports pushed South Korea's third-quarter trade surplus to US$115.3 billion, contributing about 19.6 percentage points to nominal GDP growth. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, strong global manufacturing momentum combined with AI chain demand is still expected to support high growth in South Korea's exports, but as the year-on-year base rises month by month and the month-on-month increase in memory prices narrows, the room for South Korea's export growth to rise further may be limited.