Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU)’s recent earnings growth has been so rapid that it nearly appears to be a new firm rather than a cyclical memory maker. The company has gone from a negative $5.34 EPS trough in fiscal year 2023 to an estimated $73.23 EPS in fiscal year 2026, prompting investors to ask a more fundamental question: has high-bandwidth memory truly broken Micron’s historical boom-bust pattern?
Historic Earnings Trends
The immediate bullish argument is based on undeniable practical facts. Micron is no longer just a commodity DRAM and NAND supplier, as the company has evolved into an integral component of the global AI hardware architecture. High-bandwidth memory chips stacked directly on powerful AI processors, such as NVIDIA’s next-generation graphics processing units, have made memory the key system bottleneck for training and deploying LLMs.
This shift was apparent in the third quarter of fiscal year 2026, when the company’s revenue surpassed consensus projections of $35.69 billion. Over the last year, average earnings projections for Micron have been adjusted upward by 794%, indicating a significant revision of the company’s long-term earning power among Wall Street research desks.
Micron’s Valuation Anomaly
However, even with this operational momentum, a significant disparity exists between Micron’s market valuation and its underlying profitability indicators. The stock is currently trading at a forward price-to-earnings multiple of just 6.2x, despite a return on equity of 66.6% and gross margins of 84%. This disparity hints that the market views Micron as a legacy semiconductor manufacturer destined to experience immediate mean reversion. That said, assessing the company solely on historical cyclical trends ignores the multi-year commitments that back up Micron’s cash flow.
That structural security is supported by multi-year supply agreements that span the whole AI ecosystem. Micron reported that its long-term client agreements now total more than $100 billion in minimum contracted revenue, with contractual price floors designed to safeguard gross margins of more than 70%. Moreover, Micron’s entire HBM production allocation for fiscal year 2026 has already been sold out, with management indicating that supply shortages will likely continue beyond 2027.
The Burry Bear Case Vs. the Structural Moat
Skeptics argue that Micron’s turbulent history warrants a long-term valuation discount. During the last downturn, the company’s gross margin fell from 45.2% in 2022 to a mere 2.7% in 2023, showing how quickly semiconductor cycles can fall apart when end-market demand falls or global capacity overshoots. Moreover, high-profile short positions, notably Michael Burry’s publicly stated short position, reflect macro bears’ persistent confidence that capacity expansion will eventually swamp the market and cause another major margin contraction.
That said, this bearish narrative ignores the enormous complexity and capital investment required to develop HBM3E and HBM4 architectures. Even if overall consumer electronics demand falls, the structural shortage of AI-dedicated memory allows Micron to carry pricing leverage for the foreseeable future.
Smart Money’s Accumulation
Hedge fund positioning shows growing confidence that Micron’s current cycle differs fundamentally from previous cycles. Insider Monkey’s database shows that 154 prominent hedge funds maintained holdings in Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) at the end of the first quarter, up from 137 funds in the previous three months. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group emerged as the company’s largest hedge fund stakeholder, with a significant position worth more than $1.5 billion.
Insider Monkey’s Bottom Line
ClearBridge Large Cap Growth Strategy stated the following regarding Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) in its Q2 2026 investor update:
“The Russell rebalance substantially reduced the weighting of the Magnificent Seven in the Russell 1000 Growth Index (RLG), with Apple, Microsoft and Amazon shifting toward the Russell 1000 Value Index while Alphabet’s weight increased (Exhibit 1). Factoring in the net effect of these changes, the index saw a reduction in top-heavy concentration, which we view as a welcome change. At the same time, the rebalance has caused the index to become more momentum oriented, with Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) entering the benchmark at an almost 400 basis point weighting the most immediate example.
With semiconductors becoming more than 30% of the RLG, we also initiated a position in Micron, a leading memory provider that we believe is well-positioned to benefit from growing AI infrastructure investment as AI data centers require significantly more memory than traditional computing systems. We see Micron as a differentiated way to gain exposure to the AI buildout while diversifying our semiconductor holdings.”
Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) is one of the most blatant value mispricings in the mega-cap tech sector today. The stock trades at just 6.20x forward earnings, generates a 66.6% return on equity, and is supported by over $100 billion in minimum contracted revenue, providing an unrivaled margin of safety. While cyclical concerns will always loom over memory manufacturers, the structural supply bottleneck in high-bandwidth memory provides a robust buffer against unexpected downturns.
While we acknowledge the risk and potential of MU as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than MU and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None.
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