Micron Reports Its Biggest Quarter in History Tonight. Analysts Are Calling for 998% Earnings Growth.
Micron Technology (MU) reports earnings after the bell today. And the number analysts are expecting is not a typo.
Wall Street consensus calls for $35 billion in quarterly revenue, which would represent 279% growth year-over-year. Earnings per share are projected at $20.28, up nearly 998% from the same period a year ago. The CEO has already signaled that the company expects "significant records again" in the quarter, citing AI memory demand that is, in his words, outrunning supply by a wide margin.
Here is the uncomfortable part: the stock fell 11% today anyway. Because this is how AI memory stocks work right now.
By The Numbers
- $35 billion — Consensus revenue forecast for fiscal Q3 2026, up 279% year-over-year
- $20.28 — Projected diluted EPS, up 998% from the year-ago quarter
- 100% — Micron's entire 2026 HBM supply is already sold out under fixed-price contracts
- $1,500 — Bank of America's new 12-month price target, raised from $950
- $100 billion — Projected total addressable market for HBM memory by 2028, up from $35 billion in 2025
Why Micron Is at the Center of Every AI Build
It is kinda like asking what goes into every single AI chip that gets shipped. The answer is memory. Specifically, high-bandwidth memory, or HBM. And Micron makes it.
HBM is the specialized memory that sits directly on AI accelerators from Nvidia, AMD, and Google. Without it, the chips cannot process data fast enough to run large language models at scale. Every time a hyperscaler orders another 100,000 Nvidia GPUs for its data center, it also needs the HBM that goes with them.
Micron's entire 2026 HBM production is already spoken for. Every unit, priced and contracted before it came off the line. The company expects to hold a 20-25% share of the AI memory market, which is growing faster than nearly any segment in semiconductors.
Hold on. Let me stop here. Because that number matters more than it might seem at first.
A market that goes from $35 billion to $100 billion in three years, where Micron holds 20-25% share, means the company's HBM revenue alone goes from roughly $7-9 billion today to $20-25 billion by 2028. That is before you count DRAM for PCs, NAND for storage, or anything else they sell.
So Why Is the Stock Down 11% Today?
South Korea. Specifically, South Korean memory companies Samsung and SK Hynix saw sharp sell-offs in their domestic market on June 23, touching off fears about the global chip cycle. When Korean chip stocks move, the market assumes US chip stocks follow. Sometimes they are right. Sometimes they are not.
Bank of America upgraded its price target on Micron to $1,500 on the same day the stock was selling off. Their reasoning: "robust demand and limited supplies for AI memory through 2028." That is a mainstream Wall Street firm saying the bear case is wrong.
"Memory has become a strategic asset. We're in an AI era where supply is tight and demand is structural, not cyclical."
History suggests that sell-offs ahead of earnings that beat by a wide margin tend to look like gifts in retrospect. That is not a guarantee. It is a pattern.
What to Watch in Today's Report
Revenue and EPS will beat. The real question is the forward guidance. Specifically, what does CEO Sanjay Mehrotra say about fiscal Q4 and whether HBM demand is holding at the levels priced into current expectations.
Watch for any commentary on HBM4. The company has said HBM4 is ramping twice as fast as HBM3E did. If that timeline holds, Micron enters 2027 with the most advanced AI memory product on the market at scale. That is the kind of technical moat that justifies the valuations analysts are projecting.
You do not have to trust the analysts. Trust the math. A company that just put up 279% revenue growth, with 100% of its most critical product sold out through the year, is not struggling. The stock can go down. The business is not going down with it.
P.S. Micron increased its 2026 capital spending plan by $5 billion. Companies do not do that when they expect demand to fall off. Watch the earnings call tonight closely. The guidance will tell you everything the headlines will not.