Shareholders of Samsung Electronics enter the company's annual general meeting of shareholders at Suwon Convention Center in Gyeonggi Province, March 20, 2024. Joint Press Corps

Samsung Electronics is set to hold its annual general meeting for its 5.2 million shareholders on March 19, when it plans to approve the appointment of chip specialists to its board.

Given the precedents of previous shareholder meetings, it is likely that the company's top executive will present its growth plans to shareholders during this year's meeting.

In a recent letter to shareholders, the company already outlined robots, medical technology and next-generation semiconductors as its three growth pillars. Market attention is focused on how the company will present its future vision for the chip segment, which has long been the backbone of the company's profitability. However, it appears to have fallen behind its peers.

Its annual general meeting is set to begin at 9 a.m. on March 19 at Suwon Convention Center in Gyeonggi Province. During the meeting, shareholders will vote on agendas including the appointment of new board members.

In a board meeting last month, Samsung showed its intention to amplify chip experts' voices in its overall management, nominating Jun Young-hyun, vice chair of the memory division, as one of its new board members. The board also nominated Song Jai-hyuk, chief technology officer of the memory division, as a new member, while granting a new three-year term to existing board member Lee Jung-bae, president of the memory division.

Since last year, Samsung has been holding "talks with shareholders" after voting on agendas at its shareholder meeting, with chiefs of the company's main business departments — home appliance, mobile phone and chip — explaining their future plans.

With high chances of Jun being approved as a new board member, industry officials say the vice chair is likely to offer a glimpse into the company's strategy to restore its chip competitiveness, like his predecessor, former Samsung Electronics Device Solutions President Kyung Kye-hyun, did during last year's shareholder meeting.

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Jun Young-hyun speaks during a facility installation ceremony at the company's plant in Gyeonggi Province, Nov. 18, 2024. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics

During the 2024 shareholder meeting, Kyung said the company would invest 20 trillion won ($13.76 billion) in its research and development complex by 2030 and would regain its competitiveness by developing the latest technologies for manufacturing advanced DRAM products, such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips.

Despite the pledge, Samsung allowed its domestic rival SK hynix to become the most profitable chipmaker in Korea last year, after being outpaced in supplying HBMs to artificial intelligence processor makers, namely Nvidia.

Against this backdrop, Jun took the helm of Samsung's chip division in May last year and has been making efforts to restore the company's technological competitiveness. However, most of his strategies remain under wraps, with the chip division halting media outreach for months.

"Given the situation surrounding Samsung's chip division, it is hard to expect that Jun will make breakthrough announcements during this year's shareholder meeting," an industry official said. "At the same time, calls are also growing for Jun, who returned to Samsung as a relief pitcher, to send clear messages or reveal his strategies to ease shareholder concerns about the company's future in the chip business."

One possible topic that Jun may bring up at the shareholder meeting is DRAM products using the compute express link (CXL) technology. After his appointment in May, Samsung's chip division has been preparing the mass production of CXL-based DRAM, and reportedly finished validation tests at the National Radio Research Agency recently.

CXL is an open standard that enables fast, direct communication between processors and memory devices, allowing efficient resource sharing between each chip.