MW Micron's stock is on a hot streak. Can it continue?

By Britney Nguyen

Investors are bullish on memory stocks like Micron as the ramp of Nvidia's Blackwell AI chips helps demand for high-bandwidth memory chips, one analyst says

Shares of Micron Technology Inc. clinched a nine-day winning streak on Thursday, reflecting upbeat buy-side views around memory-chip stocks, according to an analyst.

The memory-chip maker's stock closed just 0.1% higher on Thursday, but that was enough to cement its longest winning streak since last March. Shares of Micron $(MU)$ are up 23% over the past nine sessions. Investor sentiment for Micron and other memory and hard-disk-drive stocks is "super bullish," Mizuho Securities desk-based analyst Jordan Klein said in a note Thursday, adding that he has "not seen [the buy side] this bulled up on HDD stocks" since 2011.

Pricing updates on dynamic random-access memory chips, which Micron is a leader in, "all sound super positive," Klein said. And with Nvidia Corp. $(NVDA)$ quickly ramping its Blackwell AI chips, demand for high-bandwidth memory chips, which are a specialized type of DRAM chips, is growing.

See more: Nvidia just showed that things are only looking up from here

If Nvidia's next Blackwell Ultra chips come later this year or early next year, "the HBM density rises materially," Klein said, which is good news for HBM suppliers such as Micron and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (KR:005930). With better DRAM pricing and demand for HBM chips staying strong, many buy-side investors are "buying into the late June [Micron] earnings given fear they will miss a breakout back to the highs."

Meanwhile, Micron's memory-chip rival Samsung is having trouble passing Nvidia's qualification test with its HBM3e chips, Klein said, giving Micron more market share as its HBM chip yields are improving. The South Korean tech giant failed to get Nvidia's certification for the third time this month, DigiTimes reported.

Samsung's earliest quality test for Nvidia will likely be in the fourth quarter, Klein said, as the company has "missed all 2025 and probably will miss early 2026 as well." Micron, on the other hand, is already shipping its HBM4 chip samples to Nvidia, he added.

Now, investors will be looking for how much Micron can beat or guide up on its gross margins in the near term, Klein said. Sell-side investors are expecting gross margins at 36.7% for the current quarter, and 39% for the August quarter, he said, adding that Micron will "have to beat both modestly" to help its stock.

Micron is also working with Nvidia rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. $(AMD)$ on its upcoming Instinct MI350 Series AI accelerators. The company said on Thursday that it is integrating its HBM3E chips with the chip maker's upcoming graphics processing units and platforms.

Micron also said Thursday that it will expand its investments in the U.S. to $200 billion, including for two high-volume chip-fabrication sites in Idaho, and up to four in New York. It also expects to expand and modernize an existing manufacturing chip fab in Virginia. Micron wants to produce 40% of its DRAM stateside, it said. The company has finalized its CHIPS and Science Act funding of $275 million, which will support its work at the Virginia facility.

"This approximately $200 billion investment will reinforce America's technological leadership, create tens of thousands of American jobs across the semiconductor ecosystem and secure a domestic supply of semiconductors - critical to economic and national security," Micron Chief Executive Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.

-Britney Nguyen

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 12, 2025 18:02 ET (22:02 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.