TLDR
- Micron’s stock fell more than 4% pre-market despite posting blowout Q2 results, with EPS of $12.20 vs. $9.31 expected and revenue of $23.86 billion vs. $20.07 billion expected.
- The company raised its fiscal 2026 capex plan by $5 billion to over $25 billion, which spooked investors who fear the memory boom may be near its peak.
- Q3 revenue guidance came in at $33.5 billion — more than triple last year’s $9.3 billion — far above the $24.29 billion Wall Street consensus.
- Micron is building massive new chip fabs in Idaho and New York, with production at the Idaho site expected by mid-2027 and New York wafer output by late 2028.
- GAAP gross margin more than doubled year-over-year to 74.4%, and net income jumped to $13.8 billion from $1.58 billion a year ago.
Micron posted one of the strongest quarters in its history on Wednesday, but the stock still fell. That’s Wall Street for you.
MICRON TECHNOLOGY $MU JUST REPORTED Q2 EARNINGS
Topline Performance
• Revenue: $23.86B vs $19.94B est 🟢Profitability
• EPS: $12.07
• Adjusted EPS: $12.20 vs $9.21 est 🟢
• Net Income: $13.79B
• Adjusted Net Income: $14.02BOutlook
• Q3 Revenue: $33.50B vs $23.80B est… pic.twitter.com/dAPZSOkMtp— WOLF (@WOLF_Financial) March 18, 2026
The chipmaker beat on every line. Adjusted EPS came in at $12.20 against an expected $9.31. Revenue hit $23.86 billion, well ahead of the $20.07 billion consensus. Net income jumped to $13.8 billion from just $1.58 billion a year earlier, as gross margins more than doubled to 74.4%.
Q3 guidance was even more jaw-dropping. Micron guided for revenue of $33.5 billion — against an analyst estimate of just $24.29 billion. Adjusted EPS is expected to hit $19.15, versus the $12.05 Wall Street had penciled in.
The driver behind all of it is AI. As hyperscalers pour money into data centers, demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) has exploded. Micron is one of only three companies in the world that makes it, alongside Samsung and SK Hynix.
CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said volume production of HBM4 for Nvidia’s Vera Rubin GPU started in the fiscal first quarter. Next-generation HBM4e products are on track to ramp in 2027, with custom HBM lined up for Nvidia’s Feynman chip in 2028.
Despite those numbers, the stock dropped more than 4% before Thursday’s open. The issue wasn’t the earnings — it was the spending.
Capex Plans Rattle Investors
Micron announced it is boosting its fiscal 2026 capital expenditure plan by $5 billion, bringing total investment for the year to more than $25 billion. It also flagged that capex will rise again in 2027, with construction costs alone expected to climb more than $10 billion compared to 2026.
Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, summed up the market reaction bluntly: “Investors wager that these are peak earnings and will be unsustainable.” He added that the higher spending reinforces fears that the current memory shortage is temporary, and that margins will compress as new capacity comes online.
Samsung fell 3.84% and SK Hynix dropped 4.07% in Seoul on Thursday. U.S. memory-adjacent names including Western Digital, Seagate, and Sandisk also fell between 2% and 4% in premarket trading.
New Fabs in Idaho and New York
Micron is building two major U.S. fabrication campuses. The Idaho facility is expected to start initial production by mid-2027. The New York campus — a $100 billion project that broke ground in January — is targeting wafer output in the second half of 2028.
Cloud memory revenue rose more than 160% to $7.75 billion in the quarter. Mobile and client revenue jumped to $7.71 billion from $2.24 billion a year earlier.
Micron’s stock has climbed more than 61% in 2026, after surging over 240% in 2025.
Among the 10 most valuable U.S. tech companies, Micron is the only one with a positive return year-to-date in 2026.
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