Micron Technology stock rose on Tuesday. The company is gaining market share in the memory-chip business but the threat from a Chinese rival is also increasing.
The shares finished up 7.6%, at $892.67, their highest close since July 27, when they hit $900.20, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Shares traded as high as $902.43 intraday, up 8.8%. The stock was down 12% in the past month, but has risen 213% this year through Tuesday's close, and nearly 719% over the past 12 months.
There was positive news for Micron in newly released figures about the dynamic random-access memory market, which accounts for nearly 80% of the company's revenue. Micron's DRAM market share by revenue came to 25% in the second quarter, up from 22% in the first quarter, according to Counterpoint Research.
The shift leaves Micron just behind the 26% DRAM share of South Korea's SK Hynix, although it remains well behind the market leader Samsung Electronics which had a 39% share during the quarter.
"Micron's DRAM revenue has increased fivefold since Q2 2025, positioning the company to surpass SK Hynix and likely claim the second spot soon," said Counterpoint's vice president of research Neil Shah. "Micron has normally been quite conservative and modest about this, but we believe the competition is strong and it will all boil down to who has enough capacity to not leave money on the table for others to grab."
However, Micron wasn't the only one increasing its share. China's ChangXin Memory Technologies claimed 7% market share for the second quarter, which was up more than eightfold from the same period the previous year.
"If CXMT can expand its capacity and capability to meet domestic and overseas demand, starting with PCs and potential Tier-1 international customers, the supplier's market share will balloon and look a lot different a year from now," Shah said. "The question is not about 'how' but 'when' CXMT will be able to break into the Big Three Memory Club."
CXMT, which recently listed in China, has advanced rapidly in conventional DRAM and is now setting its sights on high-bandwidth memory (HBM), crucial for artificial-intelligence servers. CXMT is set to increase its share of global HBM wafer supply from 1% in 2025 to 12% in 2028, according to semiconductor and AI research firm SemiAnalysis.
A team led by Vivek Arya, a research analyst at BofA Global Research, views the recent stock reset as investors positioning ahead of an eventual downturn rather than responding to the fundamentals.
Arya wrote that Micron "remains attractive" given bear-case potential earnings per share of about $100-plus, still well above its prior-cycle peak of about $12 in 2018, plus broadening multi-year long-term agreements that improve supply/demand visibility and reduce price volatility. Arya also cited graphics processing unit to HBM utilization as a positive, saying that it "remains near all-time highs."
"Hyperscaler spending continues to rise despite higher component costs, suggesting semis/memory pricing power," Arya wrote. Although China-based manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies, or CXMT, is "aggressively expanding capacity" to low-10% of global wafer capacity, "we view limited competition in AI memory" and U.S.-based infrastructure buidout, Arya wrote.
CXMT primarily addresses the underserved consumer/commodity dynamic random-access memory segment, not high-bandwidth memory HBM3E/HBM4, Arya wrote, adding that it's unclear whether U.S. manufacturers will get government approval to buy CXMT memory any time soon.
Arya reiterated his Buy rating on Micron stock, with a price target of $1,550.
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