TLDR
- Micron stock fell 2% on Wednesday but is still up 276% year-to-date.
- Citi raised its price target on MU to $1,300 from $1,150 ahead of Q4 FY26 earnings on September 30.
- UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri expects Micron to fill only about 60% of DRAM demand next year.
- Wall Street expects Q4 revenue of roughly $51 billion, up about 350% from a year ago.
- Buyback restrictions tied to CHIPS Act funding lift in December, with repurchases expected to start in February.
Micron Technology stock dipped 2% on Wednesday, though it’s still up an eye-watering 276% so far this year. The move comes just a week before the memory chip maker reports fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on September 30.
Citi analyst Atif Malik isn’t worried about the dip. He raised his price target on MU to $1,300 from $1,150 and kept a Buy rating, pointing to stronger-than-expected DRAM pricing on the roughly 60% of Micron’s output that isn’t locked into long-term agreements.
Malik ranks No. 3 out of more than 12,500 analysts tracked on TipRanks. His calls have a 79% success rate and average a 48% return.
What Wall Street Expects From Earnings
Analysts see Q4 FY26 EPS landing around $31.49, a massive jump from $3.03 in the same quarter last year. Revenue is projected to surge about 350% to roughly $51 billion.
That growth is being driven by AI-fueled memory demand colliding with tight supply. Malik expects Micron to guide Q1 FY27 revenue to about $57 billion, with EPS near $35.25.
He also expects shares to keep climbing into the SEMICON West event, where equipment makers are likely to flag shortages of DRAM, MLCC, PCB boards and optical components. Those bottlenecks could cap DRAM and NAND bit-supply growth in the low 20% range, which would keep prices elevated into next year.
Malik does expect price growth to cool over the next four quarters, with memory prices projected to peak in the second quarter of 2027.
The Supply Crunch, By The Numbers
UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri shares the bullish view, though he’s watching a different angle. He expects the gap between memory-chip supply and demand to keep widening into next year, and thinks Micron will only be able to fulfill about 60% of DRAM demand in that stretch.
Bit demand for server DDR memory could grow roughly 80% over the same period. Arcuri even sees bit demand for server and storage SSDs more than doubling in 2027.
He’s telling clients to stop focusing on revenue upside and start watching capital return instead, since Micron’s long-term supply deals are already capping how much analysts can raise estimates.
That capital return story has a specific trigger point. Micron’s share buybacks have been restricted since it took funding under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, but those limits lift in December.
Arcuri expects quarterly repurchases to kick off around $20 billion in the February quarter, before eventually ramping toward $40 billion to $50 billion a quarter. He doesn’t expect Micron to say much about buybacks on next week’s earnings call though, figuring the company won’t want to get ahead of itself.
Wolfe Research analyst Chris Caso is on the same page as his peers. He said Micron’s long-term agreements have given investors more confidence in how long the current upcycle can run.
Wall Street currently holds a Strong Buy consensus on Micron, with 30 Buy ratings and one Hold. The average price target of $1,563.04 implies about 46% upside from current levels.
Investors will get a clearer picture of where things stand when Micron reports fiscal Q4 results after the bell on September 30. Analysts say they’ll be watching DRAM and NAND supply guidance for 2027 and 2028, gross margin trends, and progress on HBM4 production.
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