Micron just turned a commodity chip business into a money machine. The memory maker reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $54.23 billion, up 379% from the $11.32 billion it pulled in a year ago, and both revenue and profit landed above Wall Street’s already-high expectations. Adjusted earnings came in at $33.42 a share, versus the roughly $31.61 analysts expected on $51.07 billion in sales, per CNBC and LSEG data.

The quarter is the clearest proof yet that the AI buildout has turned memory into the industry’s choke point. Management described demand conditions as one of the most severe shortages the industry has seen, and the numbers back that up: this was Micron’s seventh straight quarter of triple-digit percentage earnings growth.

Micron earnings: the headline numbers

On a GAAP basis, Micron earned $37.7 billion, or $32.87 a share, up from $3.2 billion a year earlier. Operating cash flow hit $43.97 billion for the quarter, versus $5.73 billion in the same period last year.

The full fiscal year, which ended September 3, was just as dramatic. Micron posted record annual revenue of $133.19 billion, up from $37.38 billion in fiscal 2025. GAAP net income for the year was $84.97 billion, or $74.33 a diluted share. A year ago the company earned $8.54 billion.

CEO Sanjay Mehrotra put it bluntly on the call: “Micron delivered record fiscal 2026 results, and we expect an even stronger fiscal 2027.”

Software margins on a chip maker’s P&L

The single most startling figure in the report isn’t revenue. It’s the margin. Micron’s gross margin was about 86% — a number you’d expect from a software company selling downloads, not a manufacturer stamping silicon that historically swings through brutal boom-and-bust cycles.

That margin comes from pricing power. High-bandwidth memory sold under fixed-price, long-dated strategic customer agreements is locking in today’s elevated prices for years. Micron disclosed remaining performance obligations of roughly $150 billion across 26 signed strategic customer agreements — committed volumes at minimum pricing, which the company called inherently conservative.

It also says it has agreements covering the vast majority of its calendar 2027 HBM supply, with significant price increases from this year’s levels. In plain English: Micron has already sold most of next year’s premium memory at higher prices.

Guidance: even bigger next quarter

For the fiscal first quarter of 2027, Micron expects revenue of $61.5 billion, plus or minus $1.5 billion, with adjusted gross margin around 86.25% and adjusted earnings of about $38.15 a share. Wall Street had been modeling roughly $57.4 billion in revenue and $35.47 in EPS, so the forecast is a clear beat.

“Industry demand has strengthened since our last earnings call, and we expect memory and storage supply-demand conditions to be much tighter in fiscal 2027 and 2028 than they were in 2026,” Mehrotra said.

Mehrotra has also started speaking the White House’s new language. “AI is becoming Super Intelligence (SI),” he said, echoing President Trump’s new mandated term for AI, “and memory enhances this intelligence and the competitiveness of our customers’ platforms.”

The bigger picture: Wall Street still doesn’t believe it will last

Here’s the part that should puzzle anyone looking at these numbers. Wall Street expects Micron to earn roughly $160 a share in adjusted earnings for fiscal 2027. At the stock’s current price, that’s a forward price-to-earnings ratio of about 6.6 — less than half the S&P 500’s 18.5, per Barron’s.

Shares closed the regular session slightly higher and added about 1-2% in after-hours trading after the print. The market’s shrug isn’t about this quarter. It’s about the last three decades. Memory is one of the most cyclical corners of the cyclical chip industry, and investors have watched margins collapse just as quickly as they spike.

Micron is betting this cycle is different — that long-term customer agreements and AI’s relentless appetite for HBM make the peaks durable. The bears’ position is simpler: single-digit P/E ratios on a company earning this much money are the market’s way of saying it thinks these are peak earnings.

Both sides now have a data point for the next leg of the argument. Q1 2027, at $61.5 billion in guided revenue, will be the first test.

FAQ

Did Micron beat earnings estimates in fiscal Q4 2026? Yes. Adjusted earnings of $33.42 a share on $54.23 billion in revenue beat analyst forecasts of roughly $31.61 a share on $51.07 billion in revenue, per CNBC and LSEG data.

Why is Micron’s revenue growing so fast? Demand for high-bandwidth memory and storage from AI data centers has created a severe supply shortage. Prices are up, margins hit about 86%, and this was Micron’s seventh straight quarter of triple-digit percentage earnings growth.

What is Micron’s guidance for the next quarter? Micron expects fiscal Q1 2027 revenue of $61.5 billion, plus or minus $1.5 billion, with adjusted earnings of about $38.15 a share — comfortably above what analysts had penciled in.

What is Micron’s $150 billion backlog? It’s the company’s remaining performance obligations: about $150 billion across 26 signed strategic customer agreements, based on committed volumes and minimum pricing. Micron has also locked in pricing for most of its calendar 2027 HBM supply at significantly higher prices.

Sources: Barron’s, Morningstar/Dow Jones Newswires, CNBC, Barchart, Micron Technology press release via GlobeNewswire.