Micron stock soars 16% thanks to AI-driven revenue that's expected to grow even more
Global chip stocks rallied after U.S.-based Micron’s (MU) revenue forecast topped Wall Street’s expectations.
Micron shares were up over 18% in pre-market trading on Thursday morning, then stayed up around 17% after the market open. Micron’s earnings report boosted global chipmakers’ stocks, including South Korea’s SK Hynix, which saw its shares rise 9.4% — the highest it has climbed in six months, Bloomberg reported. SK Hynix shares were also responding to its announcement that its new artificial intelligence chips had started mass production.
South Korea’s Samsung closed up over 4% on Thursday, and shares of Tokyo Electron closed up 8% in Japan, CNBC reported. Tokyo Electron shares were also driven by a statement to Nikkei Asia by its chief finance officer that it sees AI-related sales jumping 150% in the current fiscal year. In the Netherlands, Dutch semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASML (ASML) saw its shares rise over 4% in early morning trading, according to CNBC.
The chipmaker set its revenue guidance at $8.7 billion, plus or minus $200 million, for the first quarter of 2025. Analysts had expected around $8.3 billion for that quarter, according to estimates compiled by FactSet.
Micron, which produces memory and data storage chips for computers, reported revenue of $7.75 billion for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024. Its revenue for the quarter was up almost 14% from the previous quarter, and up 93% year-over-year.
“[R]obust AI demand drove a strong ramp of our data center DRAM products and our industry-leading high bandwidth memory,” Micron chief executive Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement. “Our NAND revenue record was led by data center SSD sales, which exceeded $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time.”
Mehrotra said Micron is going into fiscal year 2025 “with the best competitive positioning in Micron’s history,” adding that the company expects record revenue in the first quarter of the next fiscal year.