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.

Micron turned 43.97 billion dollars of operating cash in a single quarter, up from 5.73 billion a year earlier. It finished the year with 73.48 billion dollars in cash and investments, and it even pays a dividend. Its biggest customers have signed long-term supply agreements, and Micron says memory will likely stay scarce for at least two more years, because AI memory takes about three times the factory space of ordinary memory.

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 27.37 billion dollars on factories and equipment this year, and it was a much smaller, slower business just a year ago with sales of only 37 billion dollars.

The stock swings about 2.2 times as hard as the market, both up and down. It nearly quadrupled in a year, then fell more than 10 percent in recent weeks as investors worried that higher interest rates could slow AI data center building. Growth will also look smaller later next year, once Micron is up against these huge numbers. If next quarter comes in below the 61.5 billion dollars Micron expects, the stock could drop fast and hard.