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Micron Technology (Nasdaq: MU) $MUB reported better-than-expected quarterly results on Wednesday and issued strong guidance as the memory maker continues to benefit from soaring AI-infrastructure demand, according to CNBC, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. For the fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 3, adjusted earnings were $33.42 a share, topping the $31.61 LSEG consensus, while revenue nearly quadrupled from a year earlier to $54.23 billion, versus about $51.07 billion expected. Net income climbed to $37.7 billion, or $32.87 a share, from $3.2 billion, or $2.83, a year ago. For the current first quarter, Micron guided to revenue of about $61.5 billion and adjusted EPS of about $38.15, well above analyst estimates. The stock, up more than 500% over the past year, was the best performer in the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index this year through Wednesday's close, gaining 273%, with a market cap topping $1.2 trillion.

The results reflect a worldwide supply crunch driven by historic demand for AI memory, which has lifted prices and raised costs for consumer electronics like Apple's iPads and MacBooks. Micron, the only US-based maker of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), saw fourth-quarter DRAM revenue jump 343% from a year earlier to $39.8 billion, or 73% of total sales. Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mehrotra said the company has a "strong roadmap for future HBM products" and is working with Nvidia on the industry's "first custom HBM implementation." He struck a notably confident tone on the memory cycle: "Industry demand has strengthened since our last earnings call, and we expect memory and storage supply demand conditions to be much tighter in fiscal 2027 and 2028 than they were in 2026." Gabelli Funds' Hendi Susanto called it "another strong beat and raise," adding he had "not heard any negative data points pointing to the memory cycle reversing toward a decline anytime soon."

Micron warned margins would tighten slightly this quarter, partly on higher worker pay. Adjusted gross margin was 87% last quarter and is seen narrowing to 86.3% in the current period. "We made the decision to increase incentive compensation," Chief Financial Officer Mark Murphy said. "Incentive comp is the big driver to that gross margin outlook." President and Chief Operating Officer Manish Bhatia said manufacturing pay increases, booked through inventory, would make this quarter the low point for margins. S&P Global's Melissa Otto said investors "will likely want to understand the impact of pricing on gross margin and the durability of earnings." Micron is investing $250 billion to build two new HBM campuses — the largest broke ground in Clay, New York, in January, with a Boise, Idaho fab due online next year — and guided to about $25 billion in first-half capital spending, including roughly $11.5 billion this quarter. It has signed 26 long-term supply agreements, up from 16 in June, totaling $32 billion and representing more than 35% of expected revenue through 2030, some extending into 2031. Mehrotra attended an AI-regulation summit hosted by President Donald Trump on Tuesday, days after a White House dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping; separately, hundreds of Micron staff threatened to strike at its Taiwan factories over pay, after similar strikes at rivals SK Hynix and Samsung yielded bonuses upwards of $500,000.