Samsung's results are the next big barometer for a memory-chip trade that's springing back from recent lows

Shares of Micron were up more than 4% on Wednesday.

Micron's stock was rising Wednesday after the memory-chip trade passed another test.

SK Hynix (SKHY) (KR:000660) delivered an upbeat outlook overnight alongside its earnings report, helping to fuel optimism around the memory sector. Among other things, the South Korean chip giant projected that the shortage of memory components will persist through 2030.

"Not only were the earnings far better than expected, but SK Hynix also laid a path for significant shareholder returns," Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, told MarketWatch. The company announced it will return over 100 trillion won, or roughly $75 billion, via dividends and share buybacks this year.

Micron (MU) is expected to launch its own significant shareholder-return program in December, once restrictions related to government funding have lapsed and the company becomes eligible to start buying back stock again.

The SK Hynix results further helped calm investor nerves over the sustainability of spending on memory chips, an issue that has clouded over the broader artificial-intelligence ecosystem in recent weeks. That said, memory stocks have been seeing some relief over the past few days after Anthropic's IPO filing suggested that the crucial AI company is in a better financial position than investors may have feared.

Shares of SK Hynix were up more than 12% on Wednesday, while Micron's stock was up over 4%.

Rosenblatt Securities analyst Kevin Cassidy told MarketWatch that SK Hynix's report shows that demand for memory is increasing as part of an "upcycle," and providing a major lift to profits.

"The market's concern in memory has been the cyclical nature of the memory market," Cassidy said. But the current bout of good times for the memory market "has lasted longer than any other upcycle in history," he added.

Still, there's more that memory-chip investors will be assessing this week, and Micron's stock could be due for another swing once Samsung Electronics (KR:005930) posts its own results on Wednesday.

Cassidy said that Samsung's earnings will be "significant for the AI trade" because the company is heavily exposed to dynamic random-access memory, just as Micron is.

And while the SK Hynix results were met with a positive reaction, investors took a tougher view of earnings from Seagate Technology Holdings (STX), a major storage provider.

On paper, Seagate topped expectations with its report late Tuesday, and the company saw earnings per share nearly triple. Yet Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson told MarketWatch that investors were looking for more, especially following Western Digital's (WDC) strong results and outlook last week.

Shares of Seagate were up more than 1% on Wednesday, having reversed earlier losses.

Cassidy noted that Seagate's storage products are "much different" than what Micron and SK Hynix make. He said that SK Hynix is benefiting from the fact that the memory industry is moving from older high-bandwidth HBM3E memory chips to higher-priced HBM4 chips.

"Micron participates in the HBM market. Seagate does not," he said.

See also: Colleges raced to build massive computer-science departments. Now the boom is turning to bust.

-Hannah Pedone