Did Micron Technology Just Send a $200 Billion Warning to Shareholders?

DRAM investors say this time is different. Given how much Micron is spending, it better be.

One of the biggest winners in the stock market over the past year has been Micron Technology (MU +2.36%). The company, which makes both DRAM memory and NAND flash storage, has seen its stock rise nearly 300% over the past year as a generational memory and storage shortage took hold.

This week, The Wall Street Journal published a story elaborating on Micron’s massive spending plans to expand capacity. All in all, the memory giant plans to spend upwards of $200 billion on new memory fabs in the U.S. alone, with tens of billions more to be spent overseas this decade.

While the market is currently cheering, should Micron’s massive spending plans serve as a warning to investors?

Today’s Change

(2.36%) $9.85

Current Price

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Key Data Points

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$482B

Day’s Range

$415.00 – $430.58

52wk Range

$61.54 – $455.50

Volume

1.5M

Avg Vol

32M

Gross Margin

45.53%

Dividend Yield

0.11%

Micron accelerates growth

Sometime last summer, the artificial intelligence (AI) industry moved from training to inference, and large hyperscalers began announcing massive projects to serve AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic. As a result, memory demand shot through the roof…and has stayed there.

According to Counterpoint Research, prices for both memory and NAND storage have surged by more than 90% in the first quarter alone and are forecast to increase another 20% in the second quarter.

In response, Micron has accelerated its DRAM fab expansion plans. These include two new fabs in Idaho, the state where Micron’s headquarters is located, which will cost a combined $50 billion. Micron is also working on a whopping $100 billion facility near Syracuse, New York. Add $50 billion in additional research and development investment, and that brings the total to $200 billion in the U.S. over an unspecified number of years.

For good measure, Micron also announced a near-$10 billion investment in Hiroshima, Japan, and also…

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