Micron

Micron brought in 54.23 billion dollars in the quarter that ended in September, almost five times the 11.32 billion from a year earlier. Profit came to 37.70 billion dollars, so about 70 cents of every sales dollar became profit. Micron expects around 61.5 billion dollars next quarter, so the growth has not slowed yet.

Big AI buyers are now paying Micron in advance to make sure they get memory. Micron is holding about 12.9 billion dollars of customer money for memory it has not delivered yet, up from roughly 570 million just three months earlier. Almost two thirds of sales now come from data centers, and the unit selling memory for regular data center computers grew more than elevenfold in a year to 18 billion dollars.

This industry has boomed and busted for forty years. When prices spike, every maker races to build new factories, and then prices collapse. Micron spent 30.7 billion dollars on factories and equipment this year, nearly double the year before, and it was losing money as recently as 2023.

The stock swings about 2.2 times as hard as the market, both up and down. Micron is now worth roughly 1.2 trillion dollars, so a lot of good news is already in the price. If next quarter comes in below the 61.5 billion dollars Micron expects, the stock could drop fast and hard.