Micron Stock Price Forecast: MU at $315 as HBM 2026 Sells Out and $18.7B Guide Hits

NASDAQ:MU — The Regime Shift Is Real, and the Tape Is Pricing a Supply Monopoly

NASDAQ:MU Price Action and What the Market Just Confirmed

NASDAQ:MU closed at $315.42 after a +$30.03 move (+10.52%) and traded $319.50 after-hours (+1.29% / +$4.08). The session printed $294.86–$315.60 versus a prior close around $285.39–$285.41. The 52-week range is $61.54–$315.60, meaning the stock is pressing the absolute top of the yearly band at the same time fundamentals are accelerating, not decelerating. Market cap is $355.01B, average volume 27.13M, dividend yield 0.15%, with valuation snapshots across sources ranging from roughly ~7.3–7.4x forward earnings in one framework to about ~9.79x forward in another dataset, while the headline trailing P/E prints 29.98. Real-time chart: https://www.tradingnews.com/Stocks/MU/real_time_chart

NASDAQ:MU’s One-Line Driver: It Sells the Bottleneck Inside the AI Stack

NASDAQ:MU is getting treated less like cyclical DRAM/NAND and more like “scarce AI infrastructure,” because the bottleneck isn’t GPUs anymore—it’s the memory subsystem attached to them. High-bandwidth memory demand is rising alongside accelerator deployments, and unlike broad consumer memory, the HBM lane is constrained by a tiny supplier set and long lead-time capacity additions. The market move to $315+ is effectively the market paying for visibility and pricing power—two things memory names rarely get at the same time.

NASDAQ:MU Q1 FY2026 Results: The Financials Look Like a Different Company

The quarter that reset expectations had net revenue of ~$13.6–$13.64B, up ~21% quarter-over-quarter and up ~57% year-over-year. Gross margin was reported around ~56.8% to 57%, a step-change that matters more than revenue growth because it signals mix and price, not just volume. Non-GAAP EPS surged to $4.78, up ~167% year-over-year. Gross profit dollars were cited at about $7.8B, roughly +125% versus last year’s gross margin dollars—an unusually violent jump for a business historically defined by margin mean-reversion.

NASDAQ:MU Guidance: The Forward Curve Is What Lit the Match

The forward guide is the core catalyst. NASDAQ:MU pointed to ~$18.7B in next-quarter revenue with a ±$0.4B band, which is not a “beat-and-raise” normal beat—it implies the demand/power dynamic is intensifying. Gross margin guidance was cited at ~68%, an implied ~11 percentage point sequential lift from the prior quarter’s margin level in that framing. EPS guidance for the next quarter was referenced at ~$8.42, which, if achieved, signals a business temporarily operating at peak scarcity economics. Whether you anchor on the exact gross margin sequence or the direction, the message is consistent: the company is not forecasting normalization; it’s forecasting escalation.

NASDAQ:MU Revenue Mix and Price: Where the Margin Expansion Actually Comes From

Memory rallies can be fake if they’re only unit-driven. The data here points to pricing and mix. DRAM represented roughly ~80% of total sales. DRAM revenue was referenced at ~$10.8B, up ~69% year-over-year, supported by DRAM average selling prices up about ~20% sequentially. NAND flash revenue was referenced at ~$2.7B, up ~22% year-over-year, with NAND pricing described as up by a mid-teens percentage sequentially while bit shipments rose mid-single digits. A specific profitability datapoint reinforces mix: the Cloud Memory business was referenced around ~66% gross margin, far above what the market typically associates with a memory supplier.

NASDAQ:MU HBM Capacity: Sold-Out Supply Is the Real Moat

The most important operating statement isn’t a margin number—it’s capacity. NASDAQ:MU indicated its HBM capacity for the remainder of 2025 and all of 2026 is sold out, tied to fixed price-and-volume agreements. That matters because it shifts the debate from “will memory prices fall?” to “how much of scarcity pricing is contractually locked?” Sold-out forward capacity converts a historically spot-driven model into something closer to booked revenue, at least for the HBM slice.

NASDAQ:MU Pricing Power: The Industry Prints Numbers That Don’t Happen in Normal Cycles

Contract pricing moves of the magnitude cited are not “typical memory.” One dataset referenced Q4 2025 DRAM contract prices up ~45%–50% sequentially, and total contract pricing including HBM up ~50%–55% quarter-over-quarter. Those are supercycle-type moves, and they map cleanly onto the reported step-up in corporate gross margin. When contract price moves lead margins, it usually means supply is the constraint, not demand.

NASDAQ:MU Demand Pull: Data Center Weight Is Taking Over the P&L

A key structural claim is that data center / AI-linked sales are now more than 50% of company revenue in at least one framing, and cloud/data center/automotive combined were cited at ~69% of quarterly sales. That mix matters because demand elasticity is different: cloud buildouts don’t behave like consumer refresh cycles. It also aligns with the “memory-per-system” inflation happening in AI servers, where accelerators require far more bandwidth and capacity per node.

NASDAQ:MU Capex: The Company Is Chasing Demand and Still Admitting It Can’t Catch It

Capex is being pulled upward, not downward. Fiscal 2026 CapEx was cited as increased to ~$20B from ~$18B. The key point isn’t the number; it’s what the number implies: management is seeing enough durable demand to commit to expansion, while simultaneously signaling that near-term supply stays tight because fabs and cleanroom expansions don’t appear overnight.

NASDAQ:MU Supply Outlook: Even with Expansion, the Industry Can’t Flood the Market Quickly

One supply view referenced 2026 output growth of only ~16% for DRAM and ~17% for NAND. If those numbers are even directionally right, they reinforce the scarcity narrative: supply growth exists, but not at the pace required to erase shortages quickly, especially if HBM consumes disproportionate capacity.

NASDAQ:MU HBM Trade Ratio and Why It Warps the Entire Memory Market

A cited relationship matters for how shortages propagate: HBM was described as having a roughly ~3-to-1 trade ratio versus DDR5, meaning each incremental unit of HBM effectively eats far more underlying DRAM capacity than conventional memory products. This is how “HBM tightness” becomes “DRAM tightness” even if consumer end markets wobble—capacity is being structurally reallocated to the highest-margin products.

NASDAQ:MU 2026 Product and Shipment Trajectory: The Pipeline Is Not Standing Still

HBM4 ramp was referenced for late 2026, positioning the company to stay relevant as accelerators move to the next memory standard. Shipment expectations cited a target of about ~20% more DRAM and NAND shipments in 2026, which matters because it implies the company expects to grow volume while still holding pricing power—normally you only get one or the other in memory.

NASDAQ:MU End-Market Crosscurrents: Smartphones and PCs Can Be Weak and the Model Still Works

There is explicit acknowledgment that consumer devices aren’t the engine. One view flagged potential 2026 declines of ~2.9%–5.2% in smartphone shipments and ~4.9%–8.9% in PC volumes. Yet memory content per device is rising: nearly ~59% of smartphones were projected to ship with 12GB DRAM, up 50%+ versus last year’s share. That combination can still support stable-to-rising memory demand even if unit shipments soften, especially while AI data centers absorb premium capacity.