Micron Faces Earnings Test as AI-Driven Memory Demand Meets High Expectations

Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan cut his price target on Apple to $370 from $380 while reiterating his buy rating, after John Ternus hosted his first iPhone event as Apple CEO and unveiled the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and the company's first foldable iPhone Duo. Mohan said the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max were not priced as high as he expected, with the iPhone 18 Pro starting at $1,199 and the Pro Max at $1,299, each $100 above the previous generation but below his estimated increases. Apple is absorbing part of a surge in memory prices driven by data-center demand, and management has guided fourth-quarter gross margins to between 47% and 48%, down from 50% in the third quarter. Deepwater Asset Management founder Gene Munster believes up to one-third of Pro Max owners could switch to the iPhone Duo, which starts at $1,999, and that the Duo could account for 10% of total iPhone revenue in 2027. The article notes Apple has 2.5 billion active devices worldwide and more than $39 billion in cash available to Ternus for product development and acquisitions.

UBS now expects artificial intelligence capital expenditure to reach nearly $1 trillion in 2026 before climbing to around $1.4 trillion in 2027, with surging memory costs accounting for most of the increase. The bank's updated estimates put total AI capex at $998 billion this year, almost double the $506 billion recorded in 2025, and forecast spending of $1.447 trillion next year. Memory is emerging as the main source of that growth, with UBS estimating memory spending will climb from $71 billion in 2025 to $367 billion this year and $923 billion in 2027, while other AI-related costs are estimated at $631 billion in 2026 before declining to $525 billion next year. That means higher memory costs will account for about 60% of the increase in AI capex this year and more than the entire net increase in 2027, and across the two years UBS calculates that roughly 90% of the nearly $1 trillion increase in AI capital expenditure between 2025 and 2027 will come from higher memory spending. Memory represented about 14% of total AI capex in 2025, a share the bank estimates will rise to 37% this year and reach 64% in 2027, and UBS said price-driven increases would add relatively little to real U.S. gross domestic product, instead representing a transfer of income and profits toward memory producers in Asia.

Micron Technology and Intel CEOs cautioned that memory chip shortages and higher prices could persist through 2027, with Micron's leadership indicating on a recent call that supply constraints may only start to ease meaningfully from 2028 onward. Intel's CEO echoed the outlook for extended tightness in DRAM and NAND availability, pointing to heavy AI and data center demand. Micron Technology designs and produces memory and storage hardware used in everything from smartphones and PCs to data centers, so long running tightness in DRAM and NAND supply directly touches the products it sells into these markets. As one of the larger US based chip manufacturers by scale, with a reported market value of about $1.1 trillion, its comments on supply conditions can influence how investors think about capacity planning across the wider semiconductor sector. The clearest test of this read will be how Micron's long term customer agreements and utilization plans look through 2027, especially whether the company keeps reporting high take or pay coverage across its AI oriented memory output as new fabs and its 512GB DDR5 modules move toward volume production in the second half of 2027.