New York, March 23, 2026, 4:22 PM EDT
Micron Technology shares slumped 4.4% on Monday, ending the day at $404.25. The drop came as the memory-chip maker entered the S&P 100 ahead of the open—part of the index’s latest shakeup. Notably, Micron fell hard while the Nasdaq Composite rallied 1.39%.
Why does it matter? Micron’s landed in the thick of the AI chip supply chain. Alongside Samsung and SK Hynix, the company helps anchor a tight grip on high-bandwidth memory—HBM—which is critical for powering AI. That puts Micron’s stock front and center, a kind of real-time barometer for how feverish the current spending climate really is.
This isn’t about a miss on the numbers. Only days ago, Micron set its third-quarter revenue target at $33.5 billion, plus or minus $750 million—well above the $24.29 billion analyst consensus from LSEG. In the previous quarter, revenue landed at $23.86 billion, again ahead of expectations. The board also signed off on a 30% hike to the quarterly dividend.
Investors hadn’t braced for the sheer magnitude of spending Micron laid out. The company is eyeing more than $25 billion in capital expenditures for fiscal 2026. That figure is set to climb further in 2027, with Micron planning fresh cleanroom expansions and more equipment to meet rising DRAM and HBM demand. Construction-related capex alone will jump by over $10 billion year over year in fiscal 2027, the company said.
“Construction activity is really driving a very significant increase” in overall capex, Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana said in an interview with Reuters. Take Micron’s $1.8 billion Tongluo fab deal in Taiwan: the company expects this plant to help lift DRAM wafer production beginning in the second half of 2027. Reuters
Ben Bajarin, CEO at Creative Strategies, described the bigger build-out as something that “makes sense,” pointing to how demand and capacity are shaping up right now. JonesTrading’s chief market strategist, Mike O’Rourke, sees it differently. He argued the higher budget just underscores the view that the shortage won’t last, and as extra supply arrives, memory prices could swing back to those old commodity cycles. Reuters
Micron is holding steady on its demand forecast. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra described an “unprecedented gap between supply and demand” in prepared remarks. The company still sees tight supply persisting beyond 2026 for DRAM—the main working-memory chip—and NAND flash, which is used for storage.
Here’s the snag: If new plants ramp up production faster than Micron expects, or if demand tapers and prices slip from where they are now, margin pressure could mount fast. The company also noted its forecast doesn’t factor in possible effects from trade or geopolitical issues.
Monday’s session left little to the imagination. Micron’s S&P 100 debut—paired with a lift in the wider market—didn’t do much to settle nerves over how long the AI-driven surge can sidestep the memory industry’s pendulum swings.
