Micron Technology (MU) reports earnings on Tuesday, Sept. 23, after market close. Traders know that most big tech companies have already reported results this season. So when there’s an outlier like MU, it is bound to get more focus. Because let’s face it, Wall Street really digs tech’s earnings “events!”
Some follow MU because it is one of those much-hyped “AI plays.” Its high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, chips speed up data movement. That’s something AI accelerator companies, the new icons of Wall Street, need to have any chance of living up to long-term growth estimates. So any news from MU is significant now. And earnings? Big-time attention-getter.
Yet for those of us with more grey hair (or just a lot less hair now), MU is also a reminder of a different time. The dot-com bubble, which really kicked into high gear around 1995, the time CNBC television really started to hit its stride. That’s no coincidence.
And as they celebrate the 30th anniversary of that network’s morning “Squawk Box” show, I can’t help but tie together the current market, and that of late last century. Because in many ways, today is like that era, which ultimately led to catastrophic declines in the Nasdaq Composite Index, and most of its member companies. However, the bubble went on much longer than many believed it could. So here we are, 30 years later, with the same type of decisions at hand. And MU, about to report earnings. Time flies.
Barchart has a great, insight-filled page devoted to earnings. So let’s highlight a few data points on MU.
www.barchart.com
Here are a few items that stand out to me:
After beating earnings so handily in the past couple of quarters, not doing so next week would likely create some big problems for Micron stock.
MU is up nearly $100 a share since its April low. A move like that, all the way to $160 as of Wednesday’s close, indicates expectations are high. Caution is warranted here.
This is a mature stock, and no stranger to analysts. That has produced a very narrow range between…
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