Micron (MU) reported fiscal fourth quarter earnings results after the bell Tuesday that surpassed Wall Street’s expectations — a positive signal for the AI trade and for investors hoping the chipmaker’s stock can sustain its recent upswing.
Micron’s fiscal fourth quarter revenue of $11.3 billion was ahead of the $11.15 billion expected by analysts polled by Bloomberg. The Idaho-based company saw adjusted earnings per share of $3.03 for the period ending Aug. 28 — more than the $2.84 projected.
The chipmaker’s performance follows Micron’s own boosted outlook that the company gave for the quarter in August.
Micron’s guidance for its 2026 fiscal first quarter was also above expectations. The company guided for first quarter revenue between $12.2 billion and $12.8 billion, more than the $11.9 billion expected by analysts tracked by Bloomberg. The chipmaker said it expects first quarter adjusted earnings per share to fall between $3.60 and $3.90, ahead of the $3.05 projected.
The stock briefly climbed 2% in after-hours trading following the results to hit $171.50, above its all-time intraday high last week, but later pared gains.
“In fiscal 2025, we achieved all-time highs across our data center business and are entering fiscal 2026 with strong momentum and our most competitive portfolio to date,” CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement. “As the only US-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead.”
Micron is one of three leading memory chipmakers — its rivals being Korea-based Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and SK Hynix (000660.KS) — and mainly makes two kinds of memory chips.
The company has been one of a number of tech giants to deepen their investments in the US amid pressure from the Trump administration. Micron in June said it will invest $200 billion in its US memory chipmaking facilities.
Its DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chips are used for short-term memory storage in everything from personal computers to AI data centers and historically have accounted for the majority of the company’s revenue. The DRAM market has seen a massive upswing amid a surge of investment in AI infrastructure, growing 83% to $95 billion in 2024, with Micron holding a 35% market share, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Melissa Weathers.
Micron’s HBM (high bandwidth memory) chips — which include multiple vertically stacked DRAM chips — have been particularly crucial to the AI buildout and are used alongside GPUs (graphics processing units) in Nvidia’s (NVDA) AI systems in data centers.
Micron’s DRAM segment drove the chipmaker’s revenue beat Tuesday, with revenue from those chips jumping nearly 70% from the previous year to hit $8.98 billion in the fourth quarter, above the $8.55 billion projected by analysts.
Meanwhile, revenue from Micron’s NAND chips fell below expectations, sinking roughly 5% from the year-ago period to $2.25 billion, less than the $2.35 billion forecast by analysts. Micron’s NAND memory chips store data long-term in data centers and consumer devices such as smartphones.
Micron shares have jumped roughly 98% this year, much higher than the nearly 19% average gain across the “Magnificent Seven” Big Tech stocks — a group that includes Nvidia, Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), and other megacap firms in the space. Micron’s surge also exceeds the stock gains seen across the chip industry, with the PHLX Semiconductor Index (^SOX) up 27% in 2025.
Laura Bratton is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Bluesky @laurabratton.bsky.social. Email her at laura.bratton@yahooinc.com.
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