Key insights
- The author questions BofA's aggressive Micron (MU) price target increase, citing concerns that the current stock price reflects peak gross margins and a potentially unsustainable memory cycle. They draw parallels to the 2018 memory market peak and note institutional preference for Alphabet (GOOGL) over chip stocks, suggesting caution despite potential near-term supply constraints. The author suggests waiting for signs of pricing weakness or increased HBM supply before adding to positions.
Reading through the BofA note that took MU from 500 to 950 and im honestly trying to steelman the bull case but I keep getting stuck on the same thing. The upgrade assumes elasticity of memory supply has structurally fallen because of capital, packaging and power limits. Fair enough. And AI demand is real. But at 681 the stock is pricing in something close to permanent peak gross margins.
Heres the math im running. Q2 guide is 18.7B revenue at 68% gross margin. That's annualized roughly 50B in gross profit on something like 27B of TTM run rate revenue from a year ago. Memory has done this before. 2017 to 2018 was structural shortage talk, super cycle talk, supply discipline talk, and then 2019 happened. Peak EPS of about 12 collapsed to 4 inside 18 months and the stock went from 60 to 30.
I'm not saying it's a short. Samsung strike and the Korean policy noise can legitimately tighten supply for 2 to 4 quarters. But BofA going from 500 to 950 inside one cycle is the kind of analyst behavior I remember from 2018, and the smart money 13Fs out this week didn't exactly chase chips. They chased Alphabet. Buffett's successor tripled GOOGL at 18x and exited V and MA at 30x. That tells me something about where the institutional discount rate is sitting.
I'd want at least one quarter of contract pricing weakness or HBM supply catch up before adding here. Happy to be talked out of it if someone has a better frame on why this cycle ends differently.