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The Market Is Wrong: 3 Reasons Micron's Stock Should Be Up, Not Down After Earnings
MUMicron Technology(MU) The Motley Fool·2025-03-25 11:00

Core Viewpoint - Micron's stock fell over 8% after its earnings release, but the market may be misjudging the company's long-term potential, particularly in the AI sector, while focusing too much on short-term challenges in legacy businesses [1][2]. Financial Performance - In fiscal Q2 2025, Micron reported a revenue increase of 38% year-over-year to 8.05billion,withadjustedEPSgrowing2718.05 billion, with adjusted EPS growing 271% to 1.56, both exceeding expectations [3]. - Despite the strong earnings, shares dropped due to cautious guidance on gross margins, projecting a decline to 36.5%, down 1.5 percentage points, while operating expenses are expected to rise by approximately 100million[4].MarketDynamicsConcernsaboutneartermmargintrendsareseenasexaggerated,withmanagementattributingmarginpressuretoincreasedsalesoflowermarginconsumerelectronicsmemory,whichisexpectedtorecover[5].TheNANDflashmarketremainsweak,withpricesdroppingbyahighteenspercentagelastquarter,butNANDonlyaccountedfor26100 million [4]. Market Dynamics - Concerns about near-term margin trends are seen as exaggerated, with management attributing margin pressure to increased sales of lower-margin consumer electronics memory, which is expected to recover [5]. - The NAND flash market remains weak, with prices dropping by a high-teens percentage last quarter, but NAND only accounted for 26% of revenues, indicating that the more critical enterprise data center business is growing due to AI [6]. Positive Trends - **Positive Trend 1: HBM for AI Growth** The high-bandwidth memory (HBM) market is projected to grow from 16 billion in 2024 to 35billionin2025,andover35 billion in 2025, and over 100 billion by 2030, significantly surpassing the pre-HBM DRAM industry [7][8]. Micron has improved its HBM manufacturing yields and has secured a third large customer, with quarterly HBM revenue exceeding $1 billion, representing 12.5% of total revenue [9][10]. - Positive Trend 2: New Low-Power DRAM Micron has developed a new low-power data center DRAM called SOCAMM, which offers up to two-thirds power savings compared to standard D5 DRAM, specifically designed for AI data centers [11][12]. This innovation positions Micron as a leader in this segment, potentially generating significant revenue alongside HBM [13]. - Positive Trend 3: Shift to SSDs in Data Centers Micron is gaining market share in high-end data center SSDs, and there is a potential shift from HDDs to SSDs in AI data centers due to latency and power consumption issues [14][15]. If this transition occurs, it could enhance demand for NAND products, improving margins and profits significantly by 2026 or 2027 [16].