Benzinga - by Zacks, Benzinga Contributor.
How much a stock's price changes over time is important for most investors, since price performance can both impact your investment portfolio and help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.
FOMO, or the fear of missing out, also plays a role in investing, particularly with tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.
What if you'd invested in Micron (NASDAQ: MU) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to MU for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?
Micron's Business In-Depth
With that in mind, let's take a look at Micron's main business drivers.
Idaho-based Micron Technology has established itself as one of the leading worldwide providers of semiconductor memory solutions.
Through global brands, namely Micron, Crucial and Ballistix, Micron manufactures and markets high-performance memory and storage technologies including Dynamic Random Access Memory, NAND flash memory, NOR Flash, 3D XPoint memory and other technologies. Its solutions are used in leading-edge computing, consumer, networking and mobile products.
A major portion of the revenues is derived from DRAM sales. The company's mission is to be the most efficient and innovative global provider of semiconductor memory solutions.
Micron reported revenues of $15.54 billion in fiscal 2023. The company has four reportable segments:
Compute and Networking Business Unit (CNBU): The unit comprises of DRAM and NOR Flash products that are sold to the computer, networking, graphics, and cloud server markets, and NAND Flash products which are sold into the networking market. CNBU delivered revenues of $5.71 billion (37% of total revenues) in fiscal 2023.
Mobile Business Unit (MBU): The unit comprises Micron's discrete DRAM, discrete NAND and managed NAND (including eMMC and universal flash storage solutions) products that are sold to smartphone and other mobile-device markets. MBU generated revenues of $3.63 billion (23%) in fiscal 2023.
Storage Business Unit (SBU): The unit accounts for solid state drives (SSDs) and component-level solutions sold into enterprise and cloud, client and consumer storage markets as well as other discrete storage products sold in component and wafer forms to the removable storage markets. SBU's revenues grossed $2.55 billion (16%) in fiscal 2023.
Embedded Business Unit (EBU): The unit includes Micron's discrete DRAM, discrete NAND, managed NAND and NOR products, which are sold to the automotive, industrial and consumer markets. EBU's revenues logged $3.64 billion (24%) in fiscal 2023.
The company struggles with intense competition from Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), Samsung Electronics (OTC: SSNLF), SK Hynix (OTC: HXSCF), Toshiba Memory (OTC: TOSBF) and Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC).
Bottom Line
Anyone can invest, but building a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of a few things: research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in Micron a decade ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.
According to our calculations, a $1000 investment made in June 2014 would be worth $4,432.63, or a gain of 343.26%, as of June 10, 2024, and this return excludes dividends but includes price increases.
Compare this to the S&P 500's rally of 174.28% and gold's return of 74.31% over the same time frame.
Analysts are forecasting more upside for MU too.
Micron is benefiting from improved market conditions, robust sales executions and strong growth across multiple business units. The positive impact of inventory improvement in the data center, as well as stabilization in other markets, such as automotive, industrial and others, is contributing to top-line growth. It anticipates the pricing of DRAM and NAND chips to increase next year, thereby improving its revenues. The pricing benefits will primarily be driven by rising AI servers, causing a scarcity in the availability of cutting-edge DRAM and NAND supply. Also, 5G adoption in the Internet of Things devices and wireless infrastructure is likely to spur demand for memory and storage. The stock has outperformed the S&P 500 year to date. However, the United States and China's tit-for-tat trade war is a major threat to the company.
Over the past four weeks, shares have rallied 8%, and there have been 1 higher earnings estimate revisions in the past two months for fiscal 2024 compared to none lower. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.
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