Micron Technology Gets Slew Of Price-Target Hikes, But Shares Fall – Investor’s Business Daily

Memory-chip maker Micron Technology (MU) received at least 10price-target increases on its stock Friday, a day after delivering a beat-and-raise fiscal third-quarter report, but shares tumbled, apparently due to investor profit taking.

XAutoplay: On | OffBoise, Idaho-based Micron earned an adjusted $1.62 a share, reversing a year-earlier loss of 3 cents, in the quarter ended June 1. Sales rose 92% to $5.57 billion. Analysts expected $1.51 and $5.41 billion.

For the current quarter, Micron expects to earn an adjusted $1.80 a share, compared witha year-earlier loss of 5 cents, on sales of $5.9 billion that would be up 83%, based on the midpoint of its guidance. Wall Street was modeling for $1.57 and $5.62 billion.

Micron stock received price-target hikes from Baird, Cowen, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, Mizuho, Morgan Stanley, Rosenblatt Securities, Stifel, Susquehanna Financial Group and UBS. All have buy ratings or the equivalent on the stock.

Rosenblatt analyst Hans Mosesmann was most bullish, raising his price target on Micron to 75 from 60.

Micron rose in premarkettrading, but quickly reversed, on the stock market today. By the closing bell, shares fell 5.1% to 29.86.

Analysts attributed the stock drop to profit-taking, selling on the news and concerns that Micron has hit peak average selling prices.

IBD'S TAKE: The IBD 50 list of top-performing growth stocks now includes six chip-industry players, such as Nvidia and Lam Research.

Micron is benefiting from sustained strong demand for its memory chips, especially from the data-center and cloud-computing markets, Mosesmann said in a note to clients.

"The duration and nature of this cycle is set to be the best memory cycle in the semiconductor industry," Mosesmann said. "We are about four quarters into the current cycle that has legs for 3 to 4 years."

Micron is being helped by continued high DRAM pricing and increased Nand unit shipments, Needham analyst Rajvindra Gill said in a report. He rates Micron as buy with a price target of 50.

"We believe that memory is an integral part of AI (autonomous driving, cloud computing, mobile machine learning, etc.) and expect a continued strong (pricing) environment," Gill said.

Power-conversion chipmaker Power Integrations (POWI) received a bullish report Friday from investment bank Stifel.

Stifel analyst Tore Svanberg reiterated his buy rating on the stock and raised his price target to 82 from 75.

"POWI is at the forefront of the key, long-term secular trend towards greater energy efficiency, with industry-leading products across the power spectrum," Svanberg said in a report. "From smartphones to home appliances to commercial lighting to energy transmission and high power industrial applications, POWI has developed a design win pipeline across all its market segments that is poised to capture this secular growth trend over the coming years."

Power Integrations stock was down 0.2%, near 73.95, in middaytrading.

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Micron Technology Gets Slew Of Price-Target Hikes, But Shares Fall - Investor's Business Daily