Micron Technology stock rose Monday as investors digested some mixed news ahead of the memory supplier’s March 18 earnings report.
The good: Analysts at two Wall Street firms reiterated Buy-equivalent ratings and boosted their price targets for the stock, arguing that the memory demand cycle is still on the way up. The bad: Two of Micron’s competitors are reportedly in the lead for new work with NVIDIA.
Micron shares were up 2% in morning trading. The stock fell 6.7% on Friday and 0.9% the day before. It is down 15% from an all-time closing high of $437.80 on Feb. 2.
The first question on investors’ minds leading into the earnings print is how long memory providers will continue to benefit from the rise of artificial intelligence. No one knows for sure, but demand and price growth have been intense enough for Citi to reiterate a Buy rating on Micron stock and lift its price target to $430 from $385.
In the past three demand cycles dating back to the 1990s, Micron stock has peaked two to four months before dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, prices. Citi expects DRAM prices to rise 171% in 2026 because of strong data-center demand, as demonstrated by hyperscalers’ capital-expenditure forecasts.
“Our supply chain discussions and analysis point to majority of the 2026 hyperscale capex revision to be driven by higher memory costs,” wrote Citi analyst Atif Malik in a research note Monday.
Susquehanna analyst Mehdi Hosseini said supply and demand may start to even out in mid-2027 as more memory clean-room facilities come online. But more intensive AI workloads may drive greater memory demand at that point even as margins start to narrow, Hosseini said.
Susquehanna reiterated a Positive rating on Micron stock and boosted its price target to $525 from $345 in a Monday note.
The other question investors face is whether Micron can compete with Korean rivals SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics in the race to supply the high-bandwidth memory, or HBM4, needed for advanced AI processors. Nvidia has chosen the pair as the sole suppliers of HBM4 for the company’s new Vera Rubin accelerator, Korean media reported Sunday.
Barron’s has reached out to SK Hynix, Samsung, and Nvidia for confirmation.
If true, the news may not be as big of a blow to Micron as it seems, says Richard Windsor, an independent analyst who publishes Radio Free Mobile.
“I suspect [Micron] will be brought on board later in the year when shipments scale up,” Windsor wrote in a note Monday. “Furthermore, I do not expect that Micron will suffer a loss of revenues, as everyone is fully booked out for 2026, and so any capacity that was earmarked for Nvidia will easily be sold elsewhere.”
