$MU (-1,67%)
$HY9H (+1,83%)

Good morning, my dears,

After the good figures for Sk Hynix , it was almost obvious that Micron would follow suit.

I see a favorable valuation and a good outlook for both. There is therefore still potential.

And I remain invested in both.

Micron is exceeding expectations in terms of sales and earnings. The outlook is strong thanks to the AI boom. Nevertheless, the share gave back some of its gains after the close of trading. What's going on? US chip manufacturer Micron exceeded analysts' expectations in the third quarter in terms of both turnover and profit. The company also provided an optimistic outlook, which is supported by the ongoing boom in artificial intelligence (AI). Nevertheless, the share was unable to maintain its initial gains after the close of trading. Specifically, Micron achieved adjusted earnings per share of USD 1.91, while only USD 1.60 was expected.

Full article

https://www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/19514993-chipriese-micron-ueberrascht-baerenstarken-zahlen-aktie-verhalten

$MU (-1,67%)
$HY9H (+1,83%)

As a Micron shareholder, you have experienced a sharp rise and fall over the past few months. Since April, however, the share price has shot up again, rewarding investors' patience. The management is causing a stir today with the announcement of massive US investments.

Micron goes one better! The already ambitious investment plans in the USA in the coming years are being increased once again, by USD 30 billion.

This brings the memory chip manufacturer's planned investments in the USA to a total of USD 200 billion. USD 150 billion is to flow into domestic memory production and USD 50 billion is to be spent on research and development. This is expected to create around 90,000 direct and indirect jobs in the USA. 🍊US President Donald Trump will be pleased to hear this.

Second plant planned in Idaho

The additional investment of USD 30 billion will include the construction of a second state-of-the-art storage plant in Boise, Idaho, the expansion and modernization of the existing plant in Manassas, Virginia and the development of advanced packaging technology for HBM solutions, which are essential for the AI market.

In total, the following items are planned as part of the USD 200 billion investment package:

Two modern high-volume plants in Idaho

Up to four such plants in New York

Modernization of the Virginia plant

Development of advanced HBM packaging capabilities

Strong R&D activities to promote American innovation

In the future, Micron would localize 40% of its DRAM production in the US.

The goal of strengthening production at home or bringing it back to the country is precisely what 🍊US President Donald Trump had set out.

The voices of politicians and key representatives of the AI and chip industry are therefore coming thick and fast:

Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO, Micron: "This USD 200 billion will strengthen America's technological leadership and create tens of thousands of jobs."

Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce: "Full memory chip production is returning to the US."

Satya Nadella, Microsoft: "An important step for innovation and competitiveness."

Jensen Huang, Nvidia: "Essential for next AI breakthroughs."

Tim Cook, Apple: "A great example of American manufacturing."

Michael Dell, Dell: "Ensures scalable storage solutions for progress."

Matt Garman, AWS: "A significant milestone for the industry."

Dr. Lisa Su, AMD: "Strengthens the supply chain at a critical time."

Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm: "Ensures innovation and resilience."

@BamBamInvest : "This is the way"

Micron share in rocket mode

Interesting for investors: With Micron, investors are also playing the AI trend, as Micron is one of three suppliers that provide HBM. This stands for High Bandwidth Memory, a new type of memory specially developed for GPUs. Competitors are SK Hynix and Samsung. However, Samsung in particular has major problems with HBM, which is why SK Hynix and Micron are currently ahead in the race.

Analysts expect that Micron will be able to increase its turnover to USD 45 billion and earnings per share by almost 60% to USD 11 in the 2025/26 financial year, which starts soon, despite massive investments. The current P/E ratios for the stock are 16 and 10.

From a technical point of view, buyers will not be able to continue at the resistance level of USD 114.80; the chip stock is also massively overbought. Consolidations towards the USD 100 mark could offer entry opportunities.

Conclusion: The Micron share has more than run hot and is in need of consolidation. In the course of the current cycle, however, my speculation is that the stock will reach new all-time highs. Stronger setbacks offer entry opportunities.

https://stock3.com/news/micron-mega-investitionen-in-den-usa-aktie-erreicht-zentrale-charthuerde-16439983

$MU (-1,67%)

The new E2 SSDs pack as many flash cells as possible onto a 20 cm long board. This would not be possible with conventional HDDs.

SSDs with a capacity of more than eight terabytes are rather rare on the current market. However, the manufacturer Micron is already working on drives with a capacity of up to one petabyte - 1,000 TByte. The company presented a prototype to Storage Review magazine. These are not classic SATA or M.2 SSDs. Instead, the company is experimenting with a new form factor.

The E2 (PDF) format is to be used primarily in the server sector. The EDSFF standard, which is widely used in the enterprise sector, is being expanded. Micron's E2 SSD on display is a maximum of 20 cm long and 7.6 cm wide. It is designed to fit into 1U or 2U storage racks. The system is connected with the SFF-TA1002 connector commonly used by EDSFF, which in turn is a modification of PCIe. The widespread NVMe protocol is also to be used. An interface with 256 gigatransfers per second is available via PCIe 6.0.

80 watts of power for an SSD

More than 64 NAND packages and several DRAM modules can be mounted as intermediate storage on the large board compared to M.2 and SATA SSDs. With a capacity of up to 1 PByte, the energy requirement is correspondingly high. Micron specifies a maximum of 80 watts. The average requirement should be around 20 to 30 watts.

The E2 standard is said to have a throughput rate of 8 to 10 MByte/s per terabyte of capacity, which is far faster than a conventional HDD. This is certainly the main reason why customers might invest in the new standard, which has not been widely used to date. It is not currently possible to achieve such high capacities in a small space with magnetic hard disks.

https://www.golem.de/news/1-000-terabyte-speicher-micron-arbeitet-an-ssds-mit-einem-petabyte-kapazitaet-2506-196745.html

$HY9H (+1,83%)
$MU (-1,67%)

According to market researchers, SK Hynix has replaced Samsung as the largest DRAM manufacturer for the first time. This marks the end of Samsung's 33-year market leadership. The overtaking maneuver was made possible by the sales advantage in the coveted High Bandwidth Memory (HBM).

Since 1992, Samsung had led the global DRAM manufacturers, according to unanimous reports in the Asian media. And now it is the big competitor from the same country that is overtaking the manufacturer from South Korea. At least according to a study by market researchers at Counterpoint, which gives SK Hynix a market share of 36% of sales in the first quarter of 2025 and Samsung a market share of just 34%. Micron ranks third in this statistic with 25 percent, while the remaining 5 percent is distributed among smaller manufacturers that are not named separately.

The fact that SK Hynix was able to take the lead is attributed to a DRAM product that has enjoyed extremely high demand in recent years due to the AI boom: High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), which consists of stacked DRAM dies and is used as fast working memory on GPU-based AI accelerator cards such as Nvidia's GB200 or AMD's MI325X.

According to Business Korea, SK Hynix currently holds around 70 percent of the HBM market, which is also served by Micron (since recently) and Samsung.

Huge loss of share at Samsung

If we take the market shares calculated by TrendForce for the fourth quarter of 2024 as a benchmark, however, it is not a major gain for SK Hynix, but rather a huge drop in share from the market leader that gives SK Hynix the throne. According to TrendForce, Samsung was still at 39.3 percent at the end of last year, meaning it would now have lost a good 5 percentage points. SK Hynix was already at 36.6 percent in those statistics, so would now have lost even slightly. Micron, on the other hand, would have increased significantly from 22.4 percent to 25 percent.

The sleeping giant from China awakens

However, the biggest growth would have been among the remaining manufacturers: TrendForce cited just a total of 1.6 percent market share for the small manufacturers after Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron for the fourth quarter of 2024. However, Counterpoint now speaks of 5 percent for the "others", which would have significantly increased their share.

The extent to which the studies are comparable will become clear when TrendForce presents new figures, which may or may not confirm SK Hynix as the market leader.

However, it is also clear that there is a secret winner that is responsible for the significant growth among the small manufacturers: Chinese newcomer ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has massively increased its production capacities. There has been talk in some quarters of an increase from 70,000 wafers per month in 2022 to 200,000 wafers per month in 2024.

Chinese media even predicted a market share of up to 15% for CXMT in 2025 if the company conquers the market with the latest DDR5 and LPDDR5. TrendForce assumes a share of at least 10 percent. CXMT is therefore already likely to be the new number four among DRAM manufacturers, overtaking competitors such as Nanya and Winbond.

https://www.computerbase.de/news/arbeitsspeicher/groesster-dram-hersteller-sk-hynix-stoesst-samsung-nach-33-jahren-erstmals-vom-thron.92155/

(yes, shamelessly stolen)

Nike exceeds forecasts despite declines + Fedex lowers business outlook + Micron Technology surprisingly optimistic about the third quarter + Xiaomi 2024 with record sales

Nike $NKE (-1,99%)exceeds forecasts despite declines

• The sporting goods giant Nike continues to struggle with declining sales even under a new boss.
• In the third quarter (to the end of February) of the 2024/25 financial year, revenue fell by nine percent year-on-year to 11.3 billion US dollars (10.4 billion euros).
• Nike thus slightly exceeded the expectations of analysts, who had expected an average of just over eleven billion dollars.
• On balance, the quarterly profit fell by 32 percent to 794 million dollars.
• However, Nike's earnings per share of 54 US cents clearly exceeded the analysts' forecast of 29 cents.
• In an initial reaction, the share price rose by more than three percent in US after-hours trading.
• One trigger for the decline in turnover was a slump in business in China.
• In October, former top manager Elliott Hill returned to Nike from retirement to take over the top job.
• Part of his predecessor John Donahoe's strategy was to focus more on direct sales.
• The downside, however, was that the shelf space given up by Nike in stores was filled by products from competitors.
• This made the rivals more visible to consumers.

Fedex $FDX (-1,27%)lowers business outlook

• Weak demand is making the US logistics group Fedex more cautious for the 2024/25 financial year, which runs until the end of May.
• According to a statement issued on Thursday evening, Group CEO Raj Subramaniam now expects stable to slightly declining sales, after previously assuming a roughly stable development.
• According to the manager, the revised outlook reflects the ongoing weakness and uncertainty in the US industry.
• Demand for shipping services among business customers is suffering as a result.
• Adjusted for special effects, earnings per share are expected to reach 18.00 to 18.60 US dollars instead of 19 to 20 dollars.
• The average analyst estimate is above the upper end of the new target - and the rival of DHL Group and UPS now intends to invest less money in the business than previously planned.
• In the third quarter of the past financial year, Fedex increased its turnover by a good two percent to 22.2 billion US dollars (20.4 billion euros).
• Adjusted earnings per share grew by 17 percent to 4.51 dollars.
• On average, analysts had expected slightly higher earnings per share.

Micron Technology $MU (-1,67%)is surprisingly optimistic about the third quarter

• The manufacturer of DRAM and NAND memory chips Micron Technology is more optimistic than expected about the current third financial quarter due to AI-driven demand from data center operators.
• The company is also confident about demand from consumer electronics manufacturers.
• Sales in the third financial quarter should therefore reach 8.80 billion US dollars plus/minus 200 million dollars, the company stated on Thursday evening after the US stock exchange closed.
• Adjusted for special effects, earnings per share are expected to reach 1.57 dollars - plus or minus 10 cents.
• The Micron share price rose by almost five percent in US after-hours trading.
• The outlook could signal an upturn in demand from smartphone and PC manufacturers, which has been rather sluggish across the industry for some time.
• During the coronavirus pandemic, these manufacturers had filled their warehouses as full as possible due to a shortage of parts, but were then left with excessively high inventories after the end of the pandemic, which first had to be reduced.
• This also affected manufacturers of semiconductor wafers such as the German Siltronic Group.
• The wafers are the starting product for computer chips.
• In the second quarter (ending February 27), Micron increased its turnover by 38 percent year-on-year to 8.05 billion dollars (7.4 billion euros).
• The bottom line profit doubled to just under 1.6 billion dollars.

Xiaomi $1810 (+1,89%)2024 with record turnover of RMB 365.9 billion

• Record year for Xiaomi
• Total sales in 2024 increased by 35 percent to RMB 365.9 billion
• Q4 over RMB 100 billion for the first time
• Adjusted net profit grows by 41.3 percent to RMB 27.2 billion.
• Strong growth in key areas: smartphone sales increase to RMB 191.8 billion (+21.8%)
• Electric vehicles and new initiatives generate RMB 32.8 billion in sales
• IoT and lifestyle products grow by 30% to RMB 104.1 billion
• Successful push into the ultra-premium segment: Xiaomi 15 Ultra and SU7 Ultra with strong sales figures, secured orders for SU7 Ultra exceed 10,000 units - annual target achieved ahead of schedule.
• Technological innovation and AI integration: R&D investments increase by 25.9% to RMB 24.1 billion, over 42,000 patents worldwide
• HyperOS 2 strengthens networking and AI applications in the "Human x Car x Home" ecosystem.

Friday: Stock market dates, economic data, quarterly figures

• ex-dividend of individual stocks
• BB Biotech CHF 1.80
• Walmart 0.24 USD

• Quarterly figures / company dates Europe
• 07:00 Fuchs annual result
• 07:30 Salzgitter annual result
• 10:00 Fuchs | Salzgitter PK
• 11:00 Salzgitter Analysts' Conference
• 12:00 Fuchs Analyst Conference
• No time specified: BASF Annual Report

• Economic data

01:50 JP: Nationwide consumer prices February Forecast: n/a previous: +4.0% yoy Core consumer prices (ex food) Forecast: n/a previous: +3.2% yoy

08:45 FR: Business Climate Index March PROGNOSE: 97 previous: 97

10:00 EU: ECB, current account euro area January

16:00 EU: Eurozone Consumer Confidence Index (flash estimate) March FORECAST: -13.0 previous: -13.6

Untimed: BE: EU Summit, Brussels