Micron Beats Fourth Quarter Revenue and Earnings Estimates and Delivers Strong First Quarter Outlook

Memory giant Micron (MU) reported its fourth-quarter results after the bell on Wednesday, beating Wall Street’s top and bottom line expectations and delivering a better-than-expected outlook for the first quarter.

For the quarter, Micron reported earnings per share of $33.42 on revenue of $54.23 billion. Analysts were expecting EPS of $31.83 and revenue of $51.49 billion, according to Bloomberg analyst consensus estimates.

The company reported EPS of $3.03 and revenue of $11.31 billion in the same quarter last year.

For the second quarter, Micron forecasts revenue between $60 billion and $63 billion; analysts were calling for $56.77 billion.

Micron’s fortunes, along with those of fellow memory chip producers Samsung (005930.KS) and SK Hynix (SKHY), have soared amid extremely high demand driven by the global development of AI.

Data centers require huge amounts of DRAM, used in high-bandwidth memory that is used in AI processors, including graphics processing units (GPUs), as well as ultra-fast flash storage. Micron produces both.

That’s helped propel the company’s stock price to staggering heights, up about 275% year-to-date and 550% over the past 12 months as of Wednesday.

Micron is also banking heavily on its future growth. In August, the company announced it would invest up to $10 billion over the next 10 years to build a “premier, long-term research institution” in Boise, Idaho.

While the AI ​​boom has been a boon for memory makers, it is having detrimental consequences for other sectors of the technology industry.

Consumer electronics makers have raised the prices of their devices to offset the rising cost of memory and storage chips. Most recently, Apple (AAPL) increased prices on its iPhone 18 Pro line by $100 compared to its iPhone 17 Pro.

Even though the price increases reduced the number of devices manufacturers sold, the higher prices offset much of the negative impact on their bottom lines.

Memory and chip stocks have been volatile in recent weeks amid concerns about AI safety, following Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call earlier this month to slow the development of frontier AI models.

Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on @DanielHowley.

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