Vertical vs. Horizontal Integration in HBM and Market-Implied Valuation: A Text-Mining Study

High-bandwidth memory (HBM) has become a strategic bottleneck in AI-centric systems, shifting competitive advantage from computing power alone to a design that is orchestrated by memory and packaging. We investigate whether publicly available information about companies’ integration decisions—vertical integration by Samsung Electronics and horizontal partnerships by SK Hynix—is included in market-expected valuation. We create a Korean-language news corpus spanning January 2023 to September 2025 and use seed-guided topic models to obtain firms’ vertical and horizontal integration. We verify qualitative distinguishability with t-SNE embeddings and use firm-specific ordinary least squares specifications to link topic intensities to equity prices. According to research findings, for Samsung, consolidation-oriented vertical indicators (M&A and risk ring-fencing) positively correlate with valuation, whereas supplier-enablement or operational vertical topics are not reliably factored into their valuation. Vendor-assisted scale-up and joint development topics support positive valuation for SK Hynix. This study provides a scalable framework for text evaluation, which distinguishes between general sentiment and strategic architecture, as well as evidence that capital markets reward consolidation and alliance execution differently depending on the management of the HBM bottleneck.