Micron Technology is scheduled to report quarterly earnings next week and the consensus on Wall Street is that the good times for the chip maker are poised to keep on rolling.
The stock has posted a 48% gain this year and has moved even higher over the past 12 months, surging 302% against a 29% gain for the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite. Those eye-watering, triple-digit percentage jumps may seem difficult to maintain or extend.
But earnings could be a catalyst, Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson said as he reiterated an Outperform rating on the shares and adjusted his price target sharply higher to $500 from $320. Shares rose 5.3% to $426.73.
The crux of his argument is better-than-anticipated industry pricing in the first quarter, which "has seemingly moved well ahead of expectations set previously by Micron."
Micron's initial guide for its fiscal second quarter, ended in February, suggested a roughly 30% uplift in the average price at which Micron sells its flash products per unit. While contract pricing for both DRAM and NAND memory was expected to rise by around 50% at the start of the year, contract pricing in some cases has increased closer to the triple digits, Bryson noted.
Furthermore, conversations with industry participants "have not signaled any fall-off in memory trends; rather if anything we've seen evidence of a continued lift in requirements and even tighter supply dynamics," he wrote.
Bryson conceded that there is little clarity around how Micron's contract pricing compares to industry trends and the timing of when exactly higher prices will hit Micron's income statement, in part due to its off-quarter report dates.
However, with both pricing and margins moving higher and Micron trading below what Bryson views as typical peak earnings multiples, "we see no reason to shift our positive view on the name (or more broadly the memory industry)," he wrote.
Attitudes on Wall Street are overwhelmingly positive. Of 49 firms tracked by FactSet -- Wedbush included -- 44 rate Micron at Buy or Outperform. Just four others rate it at Hold, and one at Sell.
Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh was equally as upbeat as he reiterated an Outperform rating and $480 price target on the shares Friday.
Rakesh cited "continued upside" for Micron heading into earnings, fueled by memory and pricing tailwinds as developers of data centers continue to allocate more capital to the AI build-out.
