Micron to report third quarter earnings amid sky-high demand from data centers

Micron (MU) will report its third quarter earnings after the bell today as the memory industry continues to see tailwinds from the global AI build-out.

Chip stocks, however, have been broadly hammered since the start of the week on concerns over AI spending and implementation.

Micron stock has soared a staggering 727% over the past 12 months and is up 270% since January. Rival memory maker SK Hynix (000660.KS) has seen similar stock movement, with shares rocketing 826% higher over the past 12 months and 296% year to date.

Those kinds of massive gains have raised concerns among some analysts and investors, but AI bulls say the proof is in the earnings numbers.

For Q3, Micron is expected to report earnings per share (EPS) of $20.39 on revenue of $35.5 billion, based on Bloomberg analyst consensus estimates. That would work out to a 967% year-over-year EPS increase from the $1.91 the company reported in Q3 last year. 

Revenue would jump 281% from 9.3 billion in the year-ago quarter.

DRAM revenue is projected to climb 288% to $27.5 billion, while NAND, also called storage, revenue is anticipated to hit $7.7 billion, a 256% improvement.

Micron’s adjusted gross margins could also hit 81.83%, up 110% year over year.

The earnings report comes after Micron and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) announced a strategic agreement under which Micron will supply Anthropic with its memory and storage chips. Micron will also invest an undisclosed sum in Anthropic. Such deals have been criticized as a form of circular investing that increases interdependencies between various AI companies.

Data center construction is driving immense demand for both memory (DRAM) and storage (NAND) chips.

DRAM is a vital component in AI servers, serving as a kind of holding place for important data that GPUs and CPUs need to access quickly. Data that’s not necessary for immediate use is saved in NAND memory.

DRAM is used to build high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, which is the memory used in AI data centers. But it’s also used to produce DDR RAM, found in everything from your smartphone and laptop to video game consoles.

The incredible demand from deep-pocketed data center builders, however, has put pressure on electronics manufacturers, which are battling to get their share of memory and storage chips for their devices.

Video game consoles were among the first to take it on the chin, with Sony (SONY), Microsoft (MSFT), and Nintendo (NTDOY) each raising the prices of their systems. But the memory shortage-induced price increases have since spread across the consumer technology space.