Citi Names Samsung, SK Hynix Buys on 2027 eSSD Demand Surge

Micron stock jumped nearly 5% in early trading Monday before retreating to about a 1.8% gain as of 10:10 a.m. ET, after Stifel analyst Brian Chin reiterated his buy rating and his $1,500 price target on the chipmaker. With barely a week left before Micron reports Q4 earnings on Sept. 30, Chin looked ahead to how the semiconductor memory maker might fare, noting that Wall Street analysts on average predict sales growth of 350% to $51 billion and earnings growth of 10x to $31.35 per share. Chin does not necessarily disagree with those numbers and thinks Micron might even beat them, but he warns investors to prepare for a more measured rate of upside than in recent quarters, meaning earnings beats that are smaller than investors have come to expect. The analyst attributes the shift to more of Micron's revenue coming from supply agreements with locked-in pricing, which makes results more predictable and less likely to surprise to the upside, while adding that the durability of this memory upcycle continues to be under-appreciated. Chin said DRAM and HBM markets remain undersupplied and that 15% to 20% growth in chip volume through 2027 is not unreasonable, with profit margins continuing to trend higher.

Micron Technology is set to report its fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter results on Sept. 30, with consensus estimates calling for $31.35 in earnings per share on revenue of $51 billion, slightly above the midpoint of the company's own guidance of $50 billion in revenue and $31.00 in earnings per share. The memory specialist's shares have already climbed 256% in 2026 and are up more than 23% since the start of August. PwC projects cumulative AI infrastructure spending through 2050 will reach $31.6 trillion, with annual data center capital expenditure hitting $800 billion in 2026, while Goldman Sachs estimates DRAM demand will exceed supply by 5% in 2026 and 5.9% in 2027. Analysts expect Micron's revenue to rise 317% year over year in the current quarter to $56.9 billion, with earnings per share up 7.3x to $34.95. The stock trades at 23 times earnings and a forward multiple of 6.5.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company could sell twice as many chips next year compared to this year, speaking during a speech in Scotland last Thursday. Nvidia just started shipping its next-generation data center system, Vera Rubin, which includes the Rubin GPU, the Vera central processing unit, and upgraded networking components, and can deliver up to 30 times more performance than the equivalent Blackwell Ultra system while cutting inference token costs by 97%. Huang said every frontier AI company planned to adopt Vera Rubin at launch, unlike Blackwell Ultra. Nvidia is on track to deliver around $411 billion in total revenue during its current 2027 fiscal year, based on Wall Street's average estimate, and management recently told shareholders to expect 70% revenue growth in fiscal 2028, implying almost $700 billion next year. Nvidia stock trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 28.1, less than half its 10-year average of 61.4, though risks include roughly $175 billion of fiscal 2028 sales potentially funded by Nvidia's own balance sheet, about 25% of that year's revenue according to CFO Colette Kress.