Micron Technology Inc

Goldman Sachs expects the S&P 500 to deliver another strong earnings season, with artificial intelligence investment driving an increasingly large share of corporate profit growth, according to an Oct. 2 report led by strategist Ben Snider. Consensus forecasts call for S&P 500 earnings per share to rise 27% from a year earlier in the third quarter, a slowdown from the 33% growth recorded in the second quarter after excluding accounting distortions, and Goldman expects most companies to beat consensus estimates again. The headline growth rate masks an unusually concentrated picture: information technology and energy are expected to generate nearly 80% of the index's earnings growth, AI infrastructure companies alone are expected to account for more than half of S&P 500 EPS growth, and the 10 biggest contributors are forecast to generate 68% of that growth, with Micron Technology and Nvidia together accounting for more than one-third. Micron has already reported, posting year-over-year earnings growth of 1,003% and beating consensus estimates. For the median S&P 500 company the outlook is considerably less spectacular, with consensus forecasts calling for EPS growth of 9%, down from 14% in the second quarter, revenue growth slowing to 6% from 7%, and a third-quarter net margin of 14.7% versus 15.1% in the previous quarter. The coming reports could also test whether enormous AI investments are translating into revenue, with consensus forecasts calling for hyperscaler capital spending to jump 116% from a year earlier in the third quarter, accelerating from 87% growth in the second, and Goldman expecting hyperscaler capex to grow more than 50% in 2027 and exceed the roughly $1.1 trillion currently embedded in consensus forecasts. Goldman forecasts S&P 500 EPS of $375 for 2026, up 36% from 2025, followed by $415 in 2027, with a year-end 2026 S&P 500 target of 8,000 and a 12-month target of 8,700.

Nvidia's board authorized an additional $150B for its existing share-repurchase program, bringing the remaining authorization to $235B, which the company said was the largest increase to a share-repurchase authorization in history. Micron Technology reported fiscal fourth-quarter results and guidance that topped Wall Street's expectations by a wide margin, earning an adjusted $33.42 per share as revenue soared 379.1% year-over-year to $54.23B, versus analyst expectations of $31.72 per share on $51.49B in revenue. Accenture shares rose after its Q4 beat expectations and it forecast upbeat fiscal 2027 revenue growth, reporting GAAP earnings of $3.29 per share, revenue up 6.3% year over year to $18.7B, and new bookings of $22.2B. MongoDB shares fell after CEO Chirantan Desai stepped down effective immediately to become the newly created Chief Enterprise Platform Officer at Meta, with the board appointing Dev Ittycheria as interim president and CEO. Summit Therapeutics shares surged after AstraZeneca announced a $2B equity investment in the U.S. biotech and a clinical collaboration to develop new cancer treatments, purchasing convertible preferred shares at a conversion price equivalent to $18.36 per common share, a 10% premium to Summit's five-day volume-weighted average price. For the week, the Dow fell 1.26%, the S&P 500 lost 0.27%, and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.45%.

Micron beat sales and profit forecasts for its latest quarter, driven by voracious demand from the AI boom, with guidance also strong except for margin comments on the earnings call that may have caused a muted market reaction. The memory chipmaker added about $43 billion in sales during the most recent quarter compared to the year-ago quarter, and more than $13 billion in sales from the quarter reported three months ago. Operating margins exploded in all business segments, exceeding 80% in some segments. Micron executives signaled tight capacity and higher prices for its products until 2028, with D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria saying expectations for tightening supply-demand conditions through both 2027 and 2028 meaningfully extend the industry's runway for strong pricing and earnings growth. The stock trades on a single-digit forward P/E ratio.

Micron Technology's fiscal 2026 results leave investors weighing how much of its memory-shortage profit can erode before the stock stops looking cheap. At its September 30 close of $1,065.11, the company carried a roughly $1.2 trillion equity value against $84.97 billion of fiscal 2026 net income, about 14 times annual earnings. Micron reported $133.19 billion of annual revenue, with its final quarter generating $54.23 billion and an 86.8% GAAP gross margin, and guidance for the next quarter calls for $61.5 billion of revenue, plus or minus $1.5 billion, at an approximately 85.95% GAAP gross margin. Management said 26 take-or-pay agreements cover over 35% of estimated revenue through 2030, with most revenue under a defined pricing framework carrying floor-and-ceiling bands, and it expects margins at floor prices above prior cycle peaks. Micron produced $89.68 billion of fiscal 2026 operating cash flow and $62.31 billion of adjusted free cash flow after $27.37 billion of net capital expenditure, an approximately 5.2% cash yield on the $1.2 trillion equity value.

Nvidia said its board increased its share buyback program by $150 billion, leaving $235 billion in total authorization, the largest buyback program in U.S. history according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Advanced Micro Devices said it would acquire AI model and research lab World Labs in an all-stock transaction valued at nearly $8.2 billion, a deal Citi analyst Atif Malik said gives the company deeper visibility into how AI models are evolving, while RBC analyst Srini Pajjuri said it could help position AMD to offer full-stack solutions for robotics, simulation and physical AI markets. Micron Technology reported fourth-quarter results and an outlook that beat expectations as its strategic customer agreements continued to increase, and Accenture reported fiscal quarterly results that exceeded expectations on both revenue and bookings, sending its shares up nearly 16% on Thursday. HPE closed nearly 4% higher after saying it won a $1.2 billion order of AMD's Helios AI rack from cloud infrastructure company Vultr, and raised its fiscal 2027 networking growth outlook to the high-teens to low-20s on a percentage basis, with data center networking revenue expected to grow at a low-to-high 50s percent compound annual rate through fiscal 2029. Anthropic intends to launch its initial public offering before the Thanksgiving holiday, according to Bloomberg, which also reported that Broadcom's Wall Street syndicate is starting to gather $60 billion of fresh AI chip financing to benefit Anthropic PBC and other companies, while Meta Platforms is adding a new Meta Enterprise Platform for organizations, tapping MongoDB CEO Chirantan Desai to lead it, and introduced Muse for Small Business.

S&P 500 earnings are expected to increase 24.6% from the same period last year in the third quarter, which would mark the 8th straight quarter of double-digit earnings growth for the index, according to Zacks Investment Research. The Q3 earnings season takes center stage when the big banks start reporting on October 13th, though the reporting cycle has already begun with results from Nike, Micron and others. Fifteen of the 16 Zacks sectors are on track for positive earnings growth in Q3, with 6 sectors expected to enjoy double-digit growth: Aerospace up 159.7%, Energy up 114.3%, Tech up 43.3%, Basic Materials up 29.5%, Transportation up 14.4% and Industrial Products up 13.2%. The multi-industry Conglomerates sector is the only one expected to have lower earnings in Q3 relative to the same period last year, with an earnings decline of 31.3%. Excluding the Energy sector, Q3 earnings growth for the S&P 500 drops to 20.5% from 24.6%, and excluding the Tech sector, growth for the rest of the index drops to 14.6%. For the 16 S&P 500 members that have already reported fiscal August-quarter results, total Q3 earnings are up 188.3% from the same period last year on 31.7% higher revenues, with 81.3% beating EPS estimates and 75% beating revenue estimates, a pace mostly due to Micron, whose Q3 earnings increased 1075.7%; excluding Micron, Q3 earnings for the remaining 15 index members would be up 11.7%.

Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said on the company's Q4 earnings call that physical AI, starting with self-driving cars and expanding to humanoid robots, could become a significant driver of memory and storage demand by the end of this decade. In its Q4 report on Wednesday, Micron reported earnings per share of $33.42, up 1,002% from $3.03 in the same quarter last year, while revenue climbed 379% to $54.23 billion from $11.31 billion in Q4 2025. Mehrotra said memory content in level 4 and higher autonomous vehicles typically exceeds 200 gigabytes, with storage reaching multiple terabytes, each more than an order of magnitude greater than in today's level two plus and level three semi-autonomous vehicles. He added that humanoid robots will have similar memory and storage requirements, which could serve as an additional revenue opportunity. Companies working on humanoid robots include Tesla, Figure, Hyundai's Boston Dynamics, Unitree Robotics, and Agility Robotics, though Reuters reported only 7,000 humanoid robots were sold globally in 2025 for industrial and professional services.

Technology and energy emerged as the two most consequential sector stories of the first nine months of 2026, with the S&P 500 gaining 11.4% and the Nasdaq Composite up 15.6% even as the 10-year Treasury yield moved above 5% and Brent crude gained about 40% in the third quarter. According to the Zacks Earnings Trend report dated Sept. 30, the tech sector is expected to post 42.1% earnings growth in the third quarter of 2026, with semiconductor earnings projected to surge 85.5% on 62.8% revenue growth; that growth would moderate to 29.6% excluding semiconductors and to 20.6% excluding NVIDIA, Micron and Alphabet. NVIDIA's fiscal second-quarter 2027 revenues rose 106% year over year, with Data Center revenues jumping 117%, while Micron reported fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 revenue growth of 379.3% year over year, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 6.33%, with EPS of $33.42 topping the estimate by 5.73%. On the energy side, Middle East disruptions pushed Brent above $100 per barrel during September, and Zacks expects Energy earnings to surge 111.8% in the third quarter, the sector's most pronounced upgrade to its earnings outlook since the quarter began. Chevron reported $12 billion in second-quarter 2026 adjusted earnings, its highest quarterly profit in six years, with upstream earnings rising 200% to $8.2 billion and U.S. production reaching a record nearly 2.1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, while Exxon Mobil reported $14.7 billion in second-quarter adjusted earnings, $23.6 billion in operating cash flow and $17.2 billion in free cash flow.

Micron Technology delivered another outstanding earnings report Wednesday evening, with revenue, earnings and margins all surging and management offering another strong outlook as demand continues to overwhelm available supply. According to UBS estimates, memory represented roughly 14% of total AI capital spending in 2025, a share expected to jump to 37% in 2026 and 64% by 2027. The U.S. economy added just 29,000 jobs in September, while July was revised down to a 10,000-job loss and August was revised lower to 133,000, with July and August payroll growth reduced by another 60,000 jobs combined; St. Louis Fed estimates put the breakeven rate needed to keep unemployment stable somewhere around 15,000 to 87,000 jobs per month. Bitcoin has gained roughly 35% over the past three months compared with about 10% for the Nasdaq 100, reversing its earlier summer underperformance. The Nasdaq is printing fresh all-time highs while the S&P 500 knocks on the door of record highs, as softer labor data pulls Treasury yields lower and eases pressure on the Fed to raise rates again.

Micron Technology reported record financial results for its fiscal year 2026, crediting rising AI-driven demand and effective operational execution. The company said memory chips are becoming increasingly critical as AI evolves into what it calls "Super Intelligence," and pointed to increased technology investments and strategic customer agreements as the basis for its outlook. Micron last closed at $1,097.39, up 3%. In other chip trading, GlobalWafers rose 9.7% to NT$1,190.00, while VeriSilicon Microelectronics (Shanghai) fell 11.3% to CN¥171.68. NVIDIA ended at $230.86, up 1.1% near its 52-week high, after announcing a collaboration with Delta to enhance autonomous driving solutions using its AI technology; Advanced Micro Devices settled at $615.73, up 0.6%, and Broadcom ended at $343.64, down 2.1%.

Micron is poised to out-earn every Magnificent Seven company in operating income in the current quarter, a milestone that would surprise most investors in the mega-cap tech names. The memory-chip maker easily beat sales and profit forecasts for its latest quarter on Wednesday, driven by voracious AI demand, and added about $43 billion in sales versus the year-ago quarter, with operating margins exploding across all business segments. Micron's market cap of roughly $1.1 trillion is the smallest of the group that also includes Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Tesla and Nvidia. Guidance was also strong, except for margin comments on the earnings call, and the stock is up 285% year to date.

Micron Technology reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 non-GAAP earnings of $33.42 per share, up more than 11-fold from $3.03 a year earlier and beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 5.73%. Revenue surged 379.3% year over year to $54.23 billion, topping consensus by 6.33%, as tight DRAM and NAND conditions lifted pricing and AI demand drove data center growth. Data center SSD revenues approached $10 billion, more than 10 times the year-ago level and more than two-thirds of total NAND revenues. Wall Street closed higher Thursday after a volatile start to October trading, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 0.04% at 50,926.56, the Nasdaq Composite up 0.04% at 26,871.60, and the S&P 500 up 0.2% at 7,666.45. The rally came as yields on U.S. Treasury Notes retreated from 24-year highs, with the 10-Year yield falling six basis points and the 30-Year four basis points in late trading after hitting 5.344% and 5.636% intraday, respectively.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Thursday that the company cut memory specifications on its next-generation Optimus robot chips to scale production, after Micron said humanoid robots could require hundreds of gigabytes of memory each. In a post on X, Musk said Tesla cut the AI5 chip's memory in half to 72GB and the AI6 chip's memory by a third to 144GB, calling it the only way to get enough volume for Optimus production and saying it greatly reduces cost. He added the cuts should have a negligible effect on Optimus performance because memory bandwidth is a bigger limiting factor than total memory capacity. On Micron's fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call Wednesday, CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said humanoid robots are expected to need more than 200 gigabytes of memory and multiple terabytes of storage per unit, similar to autonomous vehicles, and that physical AI could become a significant driver of memory and storage demand by the end of the decade. Tesla has reportedly placed its first large-scale component order for roughly 5,000 Optimus units and aims to eventually build 1 million units a year.

Micron reported calendar third-quarter 2026 results that beat Wall Street expectations, with revenue rising 379% year on year to $54.23 billion against analyst estimates of $50.95 billion. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $33.42, about 5% above the $31.82 consensus, while adjusted operating income reached $44.64 billion on an 82.3% margin. The memory chip maker guided next-quarter revenue to $61.5 billion at the midpoint, 6.8% above the $57.57 billion analysts expected, and projected adjusted EPS of $38.15 versus the $36.01 consensus. Management attributed the quarter to surging AI infrastructure demand, robust adoption of high bandwidth memory, and tight industry supply that lifted prices and margins, with President and Chief Operating Officer Manish Bhatia citing significant customer commitments for DRAM and NAND. CFO Mark Murphy said the company expects to sustain strong financial performance as it navigates supply constraints and expands clean room construction, with meaningful new capacity not expected until late 2028 and beyond.

Micron CFO Mark Murphy said there is no line of sight on when memory supply will be sufficient to meet demand, as the company reported blowout fiscal Q4 results driven by the AI buildout. Earnings per share came in at $33.42, up 1,002% from $3.03 in the same quarter last year, while revenue climbed 379% to $54.23 billion from $11.31 billion. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said on the earnings call that industry demand has strengthened since the last earnings call and that memory and storage supply-demand conditions are expected to be much tighter in fiscal 2027 and 2028 than in 2026, adding that as strong as fiscal 2026 was, fiscal 2027 should be even better. To head off a bust, Micron has signed 26 strategic customer agreements covering more than 35% of its revenue through 2030, most with pricing floors and ceilings. Murphy said Micron is building additional manufacturing capacity, but the facilities will take years to complete and months more to ramp once wafers start rolling off the lines.

Micron delivered a blowout quarter, beating sales and profit forecasts on explosive demand from the AI boom, with guidance also coming in strong except for margin comments on the earnings call that may be causing a muted market reaction. The memory chip maker added about $43 billion in sales in the most recent quarter compared to the year ago quarter, and more than $13 billion in sales from the quarter reported just three months ago, with operating margins exploding in every single business segment both year over year and quarter over quarter. On the earnings call, Micron's CFO said the company expects price increases to moderate eventually, with a better mix of products worked based on technology and product leadership, and that market conditions would remain tight and supportive through 2028. Separately, Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz is stepping down to become co-CEO of the merged Paramount and Warner Bros, a company that has said it may need to cut over $6 billion in costs. BFA's Vivek Arya raised his total addressable market outlook for AI in 2030 to about $2.2 trillion, up from about $1.8 trillion previously, naming Nvidia, Intel, Marvell, Micron and Lam Research among his top picks on the play.

Broadcom has agreed to lend Anthropic up to $42 billion to finance infrastructure spending, according to an IPO prospectus seen by Reuters. The relationship spans chip supply, equipment leasing and financing, and Anthropic is set to become Broadcom's largest compute customer in 2027. The arrangement includes a five-year TPU lease commitment worth $125 billion, with the TPUs being Google chips supplied by Broadcom. Broadcom is projecting AI semiconductor revenue of $115 billion for fiscal year 2027, doubling to $230 billion in fiscal year 2028. Separately, Nike released the Caitlin 1s, its signature shoe for Caitlin Clark, on Thursday morning, with the stock down 44% this year ahead of earnings after the close. Micron blew past estimates in its latest quarter, with adjusted gross margin of 87% and 26 long-term customer agreements, up from 16 the prior quarter, which Wedbush's Matt Bryson said will represent over 35% of revenue through 2030.

Alphabet rose 2% in premarket trading after unveiling Gemini 4 Argon, its most advanced artificial intelligence model yet, which the company said delivers improvements in cybersecurity, coding and complex professional work. Accenture soared 17% after fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $18.68 billion beat its own guidance of $17.75 billion to $18.4 billion and the FactSet consensus estimate of $18.3 billion, with earnings of $3.29 per share also topping expectations. Rocket Lab climbed 4.5% after signing a multiyear launch agreement for 20 new Electron missions with Tokyo-based company Synspective, which Rocket Lab called the largest commercial launch contract for Electron to date. Micron reported better-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter results, earning an adjusted $33.42 per share on revenue of $54.23 billion versus analyst estimates of $31.61 per share on revenue of $51.07 billion, though the stock fell slightly while the Roundhill Memory ETF gained more than 1% and the VanEck Semiconductor ETF advanced 1%. McCormick rose nearly 5% on third-quarter adjusted earnings of 86 cents per share and revenue of $2.02 billion, both above consensus, while Dollar Tree added 1.3% on a Loop Capital upgrade to buy from hold and Nu Holdings gained nearly 6% after denying it is pursuing a transaction with U.K. digital bank Monzo.

Micron unveiled an upbeat quarterly revenue forecast that topped expectations, sending its shares higher in extended-hours trading. The Idaho-based chipmaker said customers had increased their commitments under its long-term supply agreements to $32 billion, up from $22 billion reported in June, as businesses race to secure memory chips for AI data centers. Micron's stock price has more than tripled so far this year, giving the company a $1 trillion market capitalization. Separately, Nike was due to release its latest results after the closing bell, with investors watching for progress in CEO Elliott Hill's turnaround strategy; Nike shares have slumped by more than 44% this year and the company was removed from the S&P 100 this month. Tencent signed a $7 billion lease deal with Oracle for access to about 100,000 advanced artificial intelligence chips, the Financial Times reported, in what would be Tencent's largest ever overseas lease agreement.

In the US stock market on October 1, the focus will be on the movement of tech shares and the US September ISM manufacturing index. In the previous day's trading on September 30, the New York Dow fell for a third straight session, closing down 443.87 dollars at 50,906.05 dollars. The roughly 19-year high in the US 10-year Treasury yield weighed on the market, and rising crude oil futures prices amid difficult US-Iran negotiations heightened inflation concerns, leaving selling dominant, particularly in defensive shares. Meanwhile, some major tech shares were bought, and the Nasdaq Composite Index ended higher. On October 1, the US September ISM manufacturing index will be released at 10 a.m. local time, with the market forecast at 55.0, a slight improvement from the previous 54.6. Micron Technology's earnings for the June-August quarter, announced after the previous day's close, were strong, with both revenue and profit greatly exceeding market expectations on the back of expanding demand for artificial intelligence, and attention will be on whether this spreads a sense of reassurance about buying across tech shares today. Before the market opens, Accenture's earnings for the June-August quarter will also be released, with its fiscal 2027 outlook and progress in AI-related demand drawing attention.

Japanese chipmakers rallied on Thursday after Micron Technology's stronger-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter results and outlook renewed optimism over AI-related semiconductor demand. Advantest jumped nearly 8% by 04:16 GMT, Lasertec surged 10%, TDK rose 5.5%, Taiyo Yuden climbed 8.3%, Murata Mfg advanced 7.4%, Kioxia Holdings rose 4.6%, Tokyo Electron added 6%, and Rohm gained 4%. Micron reported quarterly revenue of $54.23 billion and forecast first-quarter revenue of $61.5 billion, above market expectations. The company also said long-term supply agreements had risen to $32 billion from $22 billion in June, while demand for high-bandwidth memory used in AI data centres continued to outstrip available capacity. The rally helped lift Japan's Nikkei 2.8% to 68,606.81 points, with gains concentrated in AI and semiconductor-related shares.

Micron Technology Inc. reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 results that set new records for revenue, gross margin, and earnings per share. Revenue came in at $54.23 billion, above the market estimate of $51.07 billion and up 379% from the same period a year earlier. Adjusted earnings per share were $33.42, above the market estimate of $31.61, while adjusted gross margin was 87.0%, above the market estimate of 86.1%. By business unit, the Core Data Center Business Unit posted the highest revenue at $18.00 billion, up 1,042% from a year earlier, followed by the Cloud Memory Business Unit at $16.28 billion, up 258%, the Mobile and Client Business Unit at $13.11 billion, up 249%, and the Automotive and Embedded Business Unit at $6.82 billion, up 376%. For fiscal 2026 as a whole, Micron reported total revenue of $133.19 billion, up from $37.38 billion the previous year. It expects first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $61.5 billion, plus or minus $1.5 billion, above the market estimate of $57.02 billion. The company also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.15 per share and began sampling a 512GB DDR5 RDIMM memory module, which it says is an industry first and supports speeds of up to 9,200 MT/s.

Micron Technology, a major maker of memory semiconductors for AI servers, reported on September 30 its fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter results for the June-August period, with revenue up 4.8 times year-on-year to 54.229 billion dollars, net profit up about 12 times to 37.701 billion dollars, and adjusted diluted earnings per share up about 11 times to 33.42 dollars, beating market expectations. Growing demand for AI servers and rising memory prices boosted results, with the cloud memory business segment revenue up 3.6 times year-on-year to 16.283 billion dollars and the core data center business segment up about 11 times to 18.002 billion dollars. For the fiscal 2027 first quarter covering September to November 2026, the company forecast revenue with a midpoint of 61.5 billion dollars and adjusted earnings per share with a midpoint of 38.15 dollars. It plans capital expenditure of about 25 billion dollars in fiscal 2027, expanding DRAM and NAND production capacity in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and elsewhere. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said memory and storage supply and demand will tighten further in fiscal 2027 and fiscal 2028.

U.S. stock index futures rose on Wednesday evening after Micron Technology posted stronger-than-expected fiscal fourth quarter earnings and guidance, reinforcing confidence in the artificial intelligence trade. S&P 500 Futures rose 0.36% to 7,743.25 points, Nasdaq 100 Futures rose 0.4% to 30,822.50 points, and Dow Jones Futures rose 0.3% to 51,430.0 points. Micron reported adjusted earnings of $33.42 per share, above expectations of $31.16, and guided current quarter EPS at $38.15, plus or minus $1.00, above street estimates of $36.02. Micron shares rose as much as 1% in aftermarket trade but pared gains to trade flat after its earnings call, as the company flagged slightly softer gross margins in the current quarter and forecast higher operating expenses for fiscal 2027, while saying it will increase shareholder returns in December. Caution over soaring yields and key upcoming labor market data stifled bigger gains, with the 10-year Treasury benchmark hitting a fresh 19-year high and remaining well above 5.2%.

Total S&P 500 earnings in Q3 are currently expected to increase 24.1% from the same period last year on 11.6% higher revenues, which would mark the 8th straight quarter of double-digit earnings growth for the index. Fourteen of the 16 Zacks sectors are expected to enjoy positive earnings growth, with 6 sectors producing double-digit growth, making it the most broad-based earnings growth performance in recent times. Conglomerates, down 35.2%, and Consumer Staples, down 0.1%, are the only Zacks sectors expected to post lower Q3 earnings relative to the year-earlier period. The sectors expected to enjoy double-digit earnings growth in Q3 are Aerospace at 159.7%, Energy at 111.8%, Tech at 42.1%, Basic Materials at 29.7%, Transportation at 14.4%, and Industrial Products at 13.1%. Micron and Nvidia continue to be material contributors to the Tech sector's growth picture, and excluding Nvidia, Micron, and Alphabet, which enjoyed an outsized gain in the preceding period, Q3 earnings for the rest of the Tech sector would be 20.6% versus 42.1% otherwise. Since the start of Q3, the Energy sector has enjoyed the most pronounced upgrade to its earnings outlook, reflecting elevated oil prices as a result of the Persian Gulf situation, and the aggregate revisions trend would still be positive even excluding the positive revisions to the Energy or Tech sector.

BofA semiconductor analyst Vivek Arya raised his estimate for the AI data center systems addressable market to $2.2 trillion at a 40% annual pace for CY26-30, up from a prior $1.8 trillion at 33%. Arya said the virtuous flywheel of agentic tool adoption by consumers and enterprises, competition between public and private AI labs, and limited chip supply will likely keep AI spending robust for the next several years, adding that any pacing or addition of safety guardrails to frontier models is likely to increase rather than reduce compute requirements. He named Nvidia, Intel, Micron, Marvell and Lam Research as top picks with near-term catalysts, citing enhanced buybacks and multiple GTC tradeshow events for Nvidia, agentic CPU strength and foundry win anticipation for Intel, the start of buybacks from December 9 for Micron, an Analyst Day on October 6 and an XPU ramp for Marvell, and share gain potential across memory and logic for Lam Research. Arya said he also continues to like AMD, Applied Materials, Analog Devices and On Semiconductor, and is staying watchful on Broadcom, which he rates Buy on compelling valuation with potential for enhanced buybacks when the company reports fiscal fourth-quarter results in December. He noted that the SOX is trading at a 21x forward PE, 12% below its 24x median multiple since the onset of ChatGPT and well below 40%-plus projected EPS growth potential, and that the fourth and first calendar quarters have historically been the two best seasonal quarters to own chip stocks, with 300-500 basis points of median outperformance versus the S&P 500 from 2010 to 2025.

Lynx Equity Strategies is positioning long on Micron Technology ahead of the company's fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report, due today after the market close, with analyst KC Rajkumar forecasting revenue of $525 billion in calendar year 2028 at 80% gross margins. Rajkumar argues the Street has missed that Micron benefits from Meta's Muse agentic workloads, as AI demand shifts from token generation on GPU and XPU hardware to longer-running agentic tasks on CPUs, moving the memory center of gravity from GPU-attached HBM to CPU-attached lpDDR5x. He also contends that Samsung has chosen to prioritize elevated profitability over market share, keeping supply tight even as data-center demand visibility extends into 2029 and 2030, which reduces the risk of a supply glut in 2028 and 2029. Lynx maintains its $1,325 price target on Micron but says its conviction has strengthened and that significant upside remains, modeling calendar 2027 revenue of roughly $350 billion at an 85% gross margin and about $250 in earnings per share, then calendar 2028 revenue of $525 billion at an 80% gross margin and $325 in EPS. The firm reversed its stance from three months ago, when it stayed on the sidelines going into Micron's May quarter earnings call, and now expects management to extend demand visibility and confirm that the supply and demand imbalance persists into 2028 and beyond, which Rajkumar calls likely to be a catalyst for the stock to make fresh highs.

Micron is set to report quarterly earnings after the close of trading, a result that could ripple through memory and semiconductor exchange-traded funds. Consensus estimates call for EPS growth of 951%, revenue to rise 355%, and a gross margin of 86.2%, according to the 8:30 panel. Micron technically would be able to restart stock buybacks as of December 9th under Chips Act restrictions, though analysts are not necessarily expecting an announcement today. The stock is up 273% year to date and 550% over the past year, and analysts hold 57 buy ratings, four holds, and zero sells. Bank of America's Vivek Arya noted channel checks showing DRAM products up 20 to 30% quarter over quarter and NAND pricing up 15%, with prices expected to keep rising in the fourth quarter. The Roundhill DRAM ETF, launched in April, is up 120% since then, while the broader VanEck SMH semiconductor ETF has gone sideways after recovering from summer declines.

Micron is set to report earnings on Wednesday, September 30, with investors' expectations running high on the AI boom as surging demand for memory chips has driven prices up and put the company on track to beat revenue estimates. Also on deck is fresh inflation data from the August personal consumption expenditures report, with economists forecasting both headline and core PCE to rise on a month-over-month basis. Finally, the ADP September employment report is expected to show 74,000 jobs added for the month, compared with 38,000 in August, offering more insight into the health of the job market ahead of Friday's full jobs report.

New Apple CEO John Ternus is reportedly planning layoffs and canceling projects, according to a Bloomberg report. The cuts are expected to range from small-scale numbers within large teams. The pressure is coming from two directions: a memory shortage that is raising component costs, and services revenue that fell quarter over quarter in June for the first time since 2022. Apple issued cautious revenue guidance for the current quarter in late July, largely because it cannot source enough memory chips to meet demand, and former CEO Tim Cook said the company reluctantly raised prices amid what he called a 100-year flood on memory pricing. The memory chip market has tightened as demand for high-bandwidth memory and advanced dynamic random-access memory used in AI servers outpaces supply, with SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, and Micron largely sold out of premium AI memory capacity through much of 2026. Layoffs under Ternus could help offset some of the memory chip pricing pressure and prevent Apple from making more significant price hikes in 2027 should the shortage continue.

Bernstein lowered its price target on SK Hynix to 2.7 million won from 3.3 million won while keeping an Outperform rating, citing more conservative assumptions on the progress and pricing of high-bandwidth memory. Analyst Mark Li said Samsung Electronics is set to gain HBM share, keeping his 440,000 won target on that stock, and wrote that the firm still prefers Samsung among the incumbent suppliers. Bernstein cut its 2027 HBM price assumptions after Korean export data for July and August showed strong signals for Samsung but weaker ones from SK Hynix's HBM production site, and continued reports of HBM4 supply difficulties led Li to push back slightly the shift from the current HBM3E generation; he now expects HBM to remain less profitable than conventional DRAM in 2027. The broader memory outlook stays firm, with Bernstein expecting conventional memory prices to rise by the mid-teens to 20% in the third quarter and by a high single digit in the fourth, shortages persisting into 2027, and prices normalizing in 2028 as supplier gross margins ease from a peak of about 90% to the high 70s. The firm kept its Outperform ratings on Micron and SanDisk, with targets of $1,300 and $3,000.

Micron will report its fourth quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday, giving investors a fresh read on the memory and AI market. Wall Street expects earnings per share of $31.83, up 950% from the $3.03 reported in the year-ago quarter, on revenue of $51.49 billion, up 355% from $11.31 billion. Within that total, DRAM is expected to generate $38.22 billion in sales and NAND storage chips $12.29 billion. The memory giant's third quarter earnings per share jumped 1,214% year over year and revenue rose 345%, while its stock has climbed 279% year to date and 587% over the past 12 months. Micron is also investing up to $10 billion over the next 10 years to build a long-horizon premier research institution in Boise, Idaho, even as rising memory and storage costs push device makers such as Apple to raise prices, including a $100 increase on its iPhone 18 Pro line versus the iPhone 17 Pro.