MW Micron's earnings are a must-watch market event - with profit growth approaching 1,000%
By Hannah Pedone and Emily Bary
Micron's massive growth is 'coming at nearly pure profit,' and that's starting to have real implications for the S&P 500
Micron reports earnings after Wednesday's closing bell.
The end of June once marked a virtual dead period for noteworthy corporate earnings, as key companies had delivered their quarterly results weeks or months before.
Now Wall Street has something to pay attention to. Micron Technology $(MU)$ has become a stock-market darling over the past year, and as the company and its profit pool have exploded in size, Micron's results are increasingly relevant to the S&P 500 SPX. The company is due to post its financials on Wednesday afternoon.
Nvidia (NVDA) and Micron are projected to be the top contributors to S&P 500 earnings growth for what's referred to by FactSet as the second quarter, meaning reporting periods that end in the months of May, June or July. Without Nvidia and Micron, the estimated earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 would fall to 14.9% from 22%, FactSet senior earnings analyst John Butters told MarketWatch.
Micron's earnings have been growing exponentially as the company cashes in on artificial-intelligence demand, which has sent prices for its memory-chip offerings soaring. The FactSet consensus calls for $20.57 in adjusted earnings per share for Micron's May quarter, up nearly 1,000% from a year earlier - and many analysts, including Morningstar's William Kerwin, expect to see a healthy beat.
"The growth from Micron has been astonishing over the past 12 months," Kerwin told MarketWatch. "Tight memory supply is sending prices skyrocketing, leading to massive growth coming at nearly pure profit." That's because most of the company's growth is stemming from price increases.
Micron has become a formidable force in the PHLX Semiconductor Index SOX, with its net income for calendar 2026 and calendar 2027 projected to rank second only to Nvidia, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
And the $136.7 billion in net income projected for Micron's 2027 calendar year would be nearly as much as what's expected for Apple $(AAPL)$ ($142 billion) and well above what's estimated for Amazon.com (AMZN) ($110.5 billion) and Meta Platforms (META) ($89.8 billion).
Stifel's Brian Chin added that Micron is "in the real sweet spot of cyclical expansion and something that's beyond what's ever taken place historically." And with a backdrop like that, you'd expect this to be "the moment in time where it's a bigger contributor to earnings momentum."
Micron has been shifting more of its business toward high-bandwidth memory, which is increasingly crucial for AI applications - and also much more profitable than traditional dynamic random-access memory, according to Jack Gold, principal analyst at J.Gold Associates.
"It's unlikely we'll see any appreciable price decreases until the manufacturing catches up with the demand, which is unlikely for the next 12-18 months at least, even as Micron has announced some very large investments in building new capacity," he told MarketWatch. That means more sustained opportunities for Micron and memory peers Samsung Electronics (KR:005930) and SK Hynix (KR:000660) to grow both profits and revenues.
That said, current estimates suggest that the latest quarter could mark the peak for adjusted EPS growth. The FactSet consensus implies expectations for about 725% growth in the August quarter, though estimates could head higher after Wednesday's results and outlook.
Meanwhile, Micron is expected to report $31.70 in adjusted EPS in its next May quarter, up from the projected $20.57 for this May quarter. That's a big rise in absolute terms, though it "only" translates to 54% growth.
Don't miss: Micron bulls are getting even more optimistic about memory trends as earnings draw closer
-Hannah Pedone -Emily Bary
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June 21, 2026 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT)
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