Micron's Earnings Beat Sends Its Stock and the Memory Sector Soaring

Micron Technology reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $41.46 billion, up 346% year-over-year, beating analyst estimates and sending its stock up 15%. The surge, driven by AI data center demand for memory chips, lifted shares of SanDisk, Western Digital, and Seagate as well. Micron's CEO said the company's high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators is sold out through 2026, with analysts now projecting record net profit of $83 billion for fiscal 2026.

Micron just posted a quarter so big it could reset how you think about the AI boom's supply chain. Revenue jumped 346% in a year, and Wall Street is now arguing about whether $2,000 a share is still too cheap. On June 24, Micron Technology reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $41.46 billion, up 346% from a year earlier and well above the roughly $35.6 billion analysts had penciled in, according to CNBC. The stock jumped as much as 15% in the sessions that followed. That's not a modest earnings beat. That's a company most investors treat as an Nvidia footnote suddenly posting numbers Nvidia would be proud of. The rally didn't stop at Micron. SanDisk, Western Digital and Seagate all jumped in sympathy, since Wall Street treats Micron's results as a bellwether for the entire memory and storage complex, according to Benzinga. SanDisk climbed as much as 22% in the days around the print, Western Digital gained roughly 11%, and Seagate added close to 9%. None of those three companies make DRAM. Investors bought them anyway, because the same forces squeezing Micron's supply are squeezing theirs. Here's the actual driver. AI data centers are buying memory chips faster than the industry can make them, and that scarcity is showing up directly in Micron's margins. Gross margin came in near 85%, non-GAAP, and data center revenue alone topped $25 billion for the quarter, an annualized run rate north of $100 billion, per the company's own release. DRAM made up $31.3 billion of the total, a company record, while NAND revenue of $9.9 billion was up 361% year over year. Smartphone and PC makers, meanwhile, are the ones absorbing the shortage. Less memory is available for them because it's going into GPU racks instead. Micron guided to roughly $50 billion in revenue for the current quarter, plus or minus $1 billion, against consensus estimates near $43 billion. A year ago, that same quarter brought in $11.3 billion. Adjusted earnings per share guidance came in around $31, versus the roughly $25.50 Wall Street expected. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told investors the company has now locked in price and volume agreements covering its entire calendar 2026 HBM output, meaning the high bandwidth memory that feeds Nvidia's and AMD's AI accelerators is effectively sold out for the year before it ships. Add it up across the fiscal year and analysts cited by Bloomberg now expect Micron to book around $83 billion in net profit for fiscal 2026. Micron has existed since 1978. That single-year estimate is larger than everything the company earned across its previous three and a half decades combined. Wall Street is now fighting over how high this goes That kind of number turns analysts combative. Price targets that sat at $1,087 to $1,500 earlier this year have been pushed toward $1,750 to $2,000 a share by some of the more bullish desks, with the Motley Fool running multiple pieces this summer arguing Micron could hit $2,000 within a year on memory demand alone. Micron shares are up 241% in 2026, the second best performance in the Nasdaq-100 behind only one other name. None of this is guaranteed to hold. Memory has always been a cyclical, brutal business, and Micron itself has posted losses within the last three years when supply outran demand. Frankly, the bet Wall Street is making now is that AI data center buildouts will keep outrunning chip supply long enough for that history not to repeat. HBM contracts locked through the end of 2026 buy Micron time. What happens after that is the question nobody selling a $2,000 price target can actually answer yet. Also read: XRP Withdrawals From Binance Hit Their Highest Level Since 2024 https://startupfortune.com/xrp-withdrawals-from-binance-hit-their-highest-level-since-2024/ • A Chinese AI Model Just Pushed Chip Stocks Into a Bear Market https://startupfortune.com/a-chinese-ai-model-just-pushed-chip-stocks-into-a-bear-market/ • Congress Takes the CLARITY Act to Wall Street as the Senate Clock Runs Out https://startupfortune.com/congress-takes-the-clarity-act-to-wall-street-as-the-senate-clock-runs-out/