Micron Falls Most in Four Years on Sluggish Sales Outlook

(Bloomberg) — Shares of Micron Technology Inc., the largest US maker of computer-memory chips, fell the most in more than four years after the company’s revenue forecast missed projections, reflecting sluggish demand for smartphones and personal computers.

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Sales will be roughly $7.9 billion in the fiscal second quarter, which runs through February, the company said in a statement Wednesday. That compares with an average analyst estimate of $8.99 billion. Profit will be no more than $1.53 a share, minus certain items, well short of the $1.92 projection.

Though Micron is seeing strong orders for components used in artificial intelligence computing, it still faces lackluster demand from makers of phones and PCs — two markets that consume the majority of its chip volume.

Micron shares tumbled as much as 17% to $86.13 after markets opened in New York on Thursday, the stock’s biggest intraday drop since March 2020.

“While consumer-oriented markets are weaker in the near term, we anticipate a return to growth in the second half of our fiscal year,” Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mehrotra said in the statement.

In the fiscal first quarter, which ended Nov. 28, sales rose 84% to $8.71 billion. Excluding certain items, profit was $1.79 per share. Analysts had predicted a sales of $8.71 billion and profit of $1.76 on average.

The company said that data center-related revenue grew 400% in the quarter from a year earlier. That unit now accounts for more than half of the company’s total sales. Still, the surge wasn’t enough to offset weak orders from makers of devices aimed at consumers, Micron said.

In that area, customers have been working through a backlog of inventory.

“We are now seeing a more pronounced impact of customer inventory reductions,” Micron said in an investor presentation. “We expect this adjustment period to be relatively brief and anticipate customer inventories reaching healthier levels by spring.”

The company predicts that the PC market will grow around 5% in 2025, with most of the expansion coming in the second half. It commented that owners of the devices are updating them more slowly than anticipated.

Micron said that its mobile business unit suffered a 19% sequential decline, brought on by the inventory reductions. Automotive and industrial sales also fell.

For fiscal 2025, the chipmaker is budgeting spending on new plants and equipment of $14 billion. That amount includes a reduction in its planned outlay on new production for storage chips.

Memory-chip makers, long accustomed to a boom-and-bust industry, are hoping for sustained demand for a new type of product called high-bandwidth memory. That technology is highly prized by makers of AI computing systems, letting Micron and other memory companies command higher prices, though it is complex to produce and deploy.

Other types of memory are still subject to large swings in price depending on the balance of supply and demand. But the three main memory companies — Micron and South Korean rivals SK Hynix Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. — have been more disciplined in adding new production. That means problems with inventory gluts won’t be as painful as in the past, Micron has said.

As recently as 2023, the company was reporting billions of dollars of net losses when prices slumped below the cost of production.

Micron makes dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, a type of chip that temporarily holds information and works alongside processors from Nvidia, Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. It also make Nand flash memory — semiconductors that store information in everything from data-center computers to smartphones.

–With assistance from Subrat Patnaik.

(Updates with size and scope of share move in the first and fourth paragraphs.)