Micron Technology, a leading memory and storage chip supplier, has reported a significant surge in its financial performance, attributed to growing demand for artificial intelligence hardware. The company's stock gained 239% in 2025 and has risen an additional 29% in January 2026.
During the fiscal first quarter ending November 27, Micron's total revenue increased 56% year-over-year to a record $13.6 billion. The cloud memory segment, which includes data center high-bandwidth memory sales, generated approximately $5.3 billion, double the revenue from the same period last year.
Earnings per share reached $4.60, representing a 175% increase. Management forecasts revenue could rise 132% year-over-year to $18.7 billion in the fiscal second quarter ending February, with earnings potentially growing 480% to $8.19 per share.
Micron's HBM3E data center chip offers 50% more capacity than competing products while consuming 30% less energy. Both Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices are incorporating this technology into their latest graphics processing units.
The company is preparing to increase production of its new HBM4E chip, which it claims will improve capacity by 60% and energy efficiency by 20%. Micron's entire 2026 supply of these chips has already been sold.
CEO Sanjay Mehrotra predicts the data center HBM market will triple in value by 2028, exceeding $100 billion annually. During the fiscal first quarter, 59% of customers' flagship smartphones required at least 12 gigabytes of memory for AI applications, more than double the percentage from the previous year.
Micron stock currently trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 38.6 based on trailing twelve-month earnings of $10.52 per share. This compares to Nvidia's P/E ratio of 46.8. Wall Street consensus estimates project fiscal 2026 earnings of $33.17 per share, giving Micron a forward P/E ratio of 12.2.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has stated that data center operators could invest up to $4 trillion annually by 2030 to meet AI developers' demand for cloud capacity.