MW Micron's stock rises as enthusiasm builds ahead of earnings

By Britney Nguyen

Micron reports earnings on Wednesday, but the company already gave investors some good news this week when it said its HBM4 offering is in production for Nvidia

Micron is on track to cross the $500 billion market-cap threshold on Tuesday.

Micron Technology could clinch a $500 billion-plus market capitalization for the first time at Tuesday's market close, with investors feeling more excited heading into the company's earnings report.

While Micron $(MU)$ achieved that market-cap milestone on an intraday basis on Monday, it failed to close above the requisite level. Since then, however, there's been some good news: The memory-chip maker said after Monday's closing bell that its next-generation high-bandwidth memory chips for Nvidia's upcoming Vera Rubin artificial-intelligence platform are in high-volume production.

That put to rest speculation that Micron wouldn't be a supplier of HBM4 for the new Nvidia chips, or at least that it would miss out initially.

The company is the only producer of HBM4 apart from South Korea's SK Hynix (KR:000660) and Samsung Electronics (KR:005930), and demand for that premium memory product has surged as AI models get larger and more complex.

See more: Micron's stock falls on fears about Nvidia's new chips, but investors may be overreacting

Severe shortages in the memory market have allowed the major players to raise prices meaningfully, and investors have met that dynamic with enthusiasm, sending Micron's stock up more than 40% so far this year.

Shares are up about 4% during midday trading on Tuesday, changing hands at about $459. They need to close at or above $444.24 to reach the $500 billion milestone, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Micron reached the $400 billion mark for the first time two months ago, the data showed.

Deutsche Bank analyst Melissa Weathers said the memory market looks strong going into Micron's earnings report on Wednesday, as demand is still far outstripping supply.

Weathers wrote in a note last week that tightness in the dynamic random-access memory market is expected to continue through 2027, especially as HBM requires more silicon than traditional DRAM products.

That should allow Micron to raise average sales prices across its DRAM business, Weathers said, sending its revenues and margins up.

On Sunday, the company announced the completion of its acquisition of Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing's P5 site in Tongluo, Taiwan. The deal, which Micron announced in January, expands its cleanroom capacity in Taiwan, giving the company more space for manufacturing DRAM products, including HBM.

Don't miss: Micron's stock climbs, putting a big milestone in sight

Micron and other chip makers have been reluctant to add memory capacity out of fear that demand will eventually slow down due to the cyclical nature of the memory market. However, as the tightness is expected to continue for the foreseeable future, Micron and the others have announced some expansion of DRAM and NAND manufacturing, as evidenced by the recent acquisition.

Rosenblatt analyst Kevin Cassidy said he expects the upcycle to continue through at least the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, since "meaningful new wafer capacity" won't be available until at least the middle of next year. Micron said its new site in Taiwan is expected to start supporting "meaningful" shipments from its existing fab there starting in fiscal 2028.

Amid the shortages, customers have been eager to ink long-term agreements to lock in supply and pricing, and Micron will have to convince investors that it can continue enforcing them despite adding wafer capacity, Cassidy said in a Monday note.

Investors will also want to see that rising prices are not leading to demand destruction, Cassidy said, referring to the idea that customers currently balking at the high cost of memory could avoid Micron's products over a sustained stretch. The AI-driven demand for memory and other types of chips has squeezed the consumer-electronics market.

However, RBC analyst Srini Pajjuri said in a Sunday note that he expects any potential demand destruction for memory in the personal-computer and smartphone markets "to be more than offset by AI/data-center demand." Data centers now make up more than half of revenue for the DRAM market, according to Pajjuri, and he expects the demand for HBM and DDR memory to continue through 2027.

For the fiscal second quarter, analysts tracked by FactSet are expecting Micron to report revenues of $19.8 billion, reflecting a 145% increase from the previous year. The company is expected to report adjusted earnings of $9.19 a share on net income of $10.3 billion, according to the FactSet consensus, which would represent 489% year-over-year growth.

-Britney Nguyen

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March 17, 2026 15:22 ET (19:22 GMT)

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