Micron Earnings Loom Over Chip ETFs as Buyback Window Nears

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.

Sandisk Corporation reported $8.97 billion in fiscal fourth-quarter revenue, with $2.98 billion coming from data centers, roughly 33% of the quarter's total, while edge revenue was $5.43 billion and consumer revenue $556 million. Data-center revenue rose from $213 million a year earlier, and its full-year contribution was $5.15 billion out of total sales of $20.25 billion, or about 25%. The company earned $6.90 billion in the quarter and $11.43 billion in fiscal 2026, and reported an 84.6% GAAP gross margin while guiding to an 83% to 84.9% GAAP range for the next quarter. On August 13, Sandisk said eight structured customer agreements covered roughly half of fiscal 2027 bits and two-thirds of fiscal 2028 bits, with minimum financial guarantees, and management's fiscal 2028 to 2030 model targets about 80% adjusted gross margin and 50% adjusted free-cash-flow margin. Short interest stood at 5,618,213 shares on September 15, about 3.8% of float and 0.56 days to cover, and Insider Monkey's hedge fund database counted 128 hedge-fund holders in Q2 2026, up from 114 in Q1.