In its fiscal third quarter (ended May 28, 2026), memory specialist Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) booked $41.5 billion of revenue — more than it generated in any full fiscal year in its history. Its best year ever, fiscal 2025, brought in $37.4 billion. The market spent Thursday deciding the story has further to run. Shares…
In its fiscal third quarter (ended May 28, 2026), memory specialist Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) booked $41.5 billion of revenue — more than it generated in any full fiscal year in its history. Its best year ever, fiscal 2025, brought in $37.4 billion.
The market spent Thursday deciding the story has further to run. Shares jumped 18.4% to $874.66 after Samsung told investors it expects the memory shortage to worsen in 2027 and continue into 2028. Micron’s market value stood near $988 billion at Thursday’s close, and the stock would need a climb of more than 40% to revisit its high of $1,255.
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So, where could the stock realistically be in 2030? I think the honest answer has to take memory’s history as seriously as its moment.
Image source: Micron.
What the boom is delivering
The scale here is worth spelling out. Revenue of $41.5 billion was up nearly 350% year over year, from $9.3 billion, and up from $23.9 billion just one quarter earlier.
Profits are keeping pace. GAAP net income came in at $28.2 billion, helped by a gross margin of 84.6%. Operating cash flow was $25.4 billion, up from $11.9 billion the prior quarter and $4.6 billion in the year-ago period.
And even after $7.1 billion of capital expenditures, Micron generated $18.3 billion of adjusted free cash flow in a single quarter.
Even more, management expects a bigger quarter ahead. Guidance for the fiscal fourth quarter calls for roughly $50 billion of revenue, give or take a billion, at a gross margin near 86% — with earnings of about $30.73 per share. Annualize that guided pace, and Micron is running at about $123 of earnings per share. At Thursday’s close, the stock trades at about 7 times its guided earnings power. Measured against the past 12 months instead, shares go for about 20 times earnings. The distance between those two numbers is the market saying it doesn’t trust the boom to hold.
The company also argues that this cycle is built differently.
“We believe our multi-year Strategic Customer Agreements will significantly enhance the durability and predictability of Micron’s strong financial performance,” said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra in the fiscal third-quarter earnings release.
Locked-in customer commitments, plus HBM4 (Micron’s latest high-bandwidth memory for artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators) already shipping in high volume and its successor, HBM4E, pointed at 2027, form the case for this boom outlasting past ones.
What the cycle says about 2030
Zoom out, however, and memory’s history argues for caution. In fiscal 2023, an oversupplied market roughly halved Micron’s revenue to $15.5 billion, and the company lost $5.8 billion. That was three years ago — same company, same industry. After all, booms in this business have always financed the supply that eventually ends them, and prices like today’s are an open invitation for rivals to add capacity.
So build the range from both truths.
If contracted pricing holds and AI demand keeps absorbing supply into the decade, earnings power in the $120-per-share range could persist or even grow. Give that a multiple of 10 to 12 (arguably modest for a business this profitable), and the stock sits somewhere around $1,200 to $1,500 by 2030.
If the cycle turns the way it always has historically, however, the math changes completely. Suppose earnings settle toward a mid-cycle level — call it $40 to $60 per share, somewhere between fiscal 2025’s $7.59 and today’s triple digits. At 10 to 12 times, that’s a stock somewhere between $400 and $700.
Split the difference, and the expected range is about $800 to $1,100, close to where the stock already trades. The midpoint of this range implies only modest returns from Thursday’s $874.66. The market, it seems, has priced the middle path: several more boom quarters, then a slide toward normal.
That framing shapes what I’d do. I’d consider owning Micron here, but only modestly. The contracts and the product lineup make this boom sturdier than the last one, and 7 times guided earnings is not a price that requires perfection.
But memory has never gone in one direction for long, and I don’t expect 2030 to arrive without another turn of the cycle. My base case is that the stock lands in the $800 to $1,100 range by then, with plenty of room to be wrong in either direction. If the fiscal fourth-quarter report (likely this fall) shows the supply agreements holding prices the way management promises, the higher end gets more believable.
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Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Micron Technology. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Where Will Micron Stock Be in 2030? was originally published by The Motley Fool
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