Party on, Micron! Kyle Green/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesKyle Green/Bloomberg via Getty Images AI may be a cause of existential dread for “doomers,” but for memory chip makers, life has never been better. Micron, one of the world’s three biggest memory companies, delivered a massive beat-and-raise earnings report on Wednesday. Revenue in the three months ended Sept. 3 grew an astounding 380% year-over-year, coming in billions of dollars above analyst estimates, at $54.2 billion. Earnings per share, which were $2.83 at this time last year, surged to $32.87. And Micron execs promised more good times ahead, forecasting revenue in the current quarter that will top analyst targets and explaining that the world's AI data centers will be starved for memory chips for the foreseeable future. “We expect memory and storage supply-demand conditions to be much tighter in calendar 2027 and 2028 than they were in 2026,” said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra in prepared remarks. So why was Micron’s stock essentially flat after the stunning report? Two reasons. For one thing, the stock is up 274% already this year. And then there’s the fact that Micron decided to share some of its growing windfall with its employees by raising its incentive compensation plan. That increase means that Micron’s gross margin in the current quarter will be (just) 86.3%, rather than the 86.7% Wall Street had been expecting. “Incentive comp is the big driver to that gross margin outlook,” Micron’s CFO told analysts on the conference call, according to Bloomberg.
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