Micron Shares Jump as Stifel Reiterates Buy and $1,500 Target Ahead of Q4 Earnings

Apple is preparing to raise prices on its products to offset surging costs for memory and storage chips, with CEO Tim Cook calling the situation a "hundred-year flood" in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal. Cook said price increases are "unavoidable" and that the company has been trying to shield customers but the situation has become "unsustainable," though he declined to specify timing, magnitude or which products will be affected; Apple's next major launch is expected in September with the iPhone 18 lineup. The Wall Street Journal reported that prices for memory and storage chips have quadrupled since last year as demand from the rapid buildout of AI servers intensified competition for the same key chips used in consumer devices. TechInsights estimates that if Apple passes on the higher costs while protecting its margins, the next iPhone Pro model could cost roughly $270 more, and Morgan Stanley estimates smartphone and PC prices in the U.S. could rise 15% this year. Other major device makers including Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Nintendo have already raised prices.

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.

Citi reiterated Buy ratings on Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, flagging both memory makers as beneficiaries of a sharp rise in enterprise solid-state drive demand driven by artificial intelligence. The bank forecasts eSSD demand will grow 52.9% year over year in 2027, with total SSD demand rising 45% as AI systems require larger data pools closer to accelerators. Citi said continual learning and AI inference are set to drive the increase, and that strong enterprise AI demand should offset softer consumer NAND demand amid weaker mobile and PC markets. With memory makers prioritizing DRAM and high-bandwidth memory capacity over NAND, Citi projects NAND deficits of 6.1% in 2027 and 5.5% in 2028, up from just 0.8% this year. The bank added that AI data centers, particularly in China, are increasingly favoring SSDs over hard disk drives.