A Quarter Nobody Can Plan Around
Micron Technology reported its fiscal fourth-quarter results on 30 September 2026, and the company that makes a large share of the world's memory chips described a market where demand keeps outrunning supply.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Fiscal Q4 revenue | 54.23 billion dollars, against 41.46 billion in Q3 and 11.32 billion a year earlier |
| GAAP net income, Q4 | 37.70 billion dollars |
| GAAP gross margin, Q4 | 86.8 percent |
| Fiscal 2026 revenue | 133.19 billion dollars, against 37.38 billion the year before |
| Fiscal Q1 2027 revenue guidance | 61.5 billion dollars, plus or minus 1.5 billion |
The Register notes that the data-centre DRAM business unit earned a 90 percent gross margin in the quarter, up from 41 percent a year earlier, and that data-centre SSD sales reached almost 10 billion dollars. A supplier earning those margins has little reason to cut prices.
Who Gets The Memory: Contracts Before Spot
The detail that matters to buyers sits in how Micron sells. It has signed 26 multi-year strategic customer agreements built on take-or-pay terms, which it estimates will account for more than 35 percent of its revenue through 2030, according to The Stack. Most carry pricing bands with a floor and a ceiling, and the rest are repriced periodically against the market.
Mehrotra also reminded investors that Micron has already sold most of the memory it will make next year. The market is splitting into customers with contracts, who get allocation at a bounded price, and everyone else, who competes for what remains.
Why Relief Is Not Coming In 2028
Mehrotra said Micron sees demand exceeding supply in calendar 2027 and 2028, and greater tightness in both years than in 2026. He expects industry HBM bit shipments to grow faster than conventional DRAM through 2028, a structural gap that keeps ordinary DRAM scarce.
New capacity will not fix that quickly. Micron plans about 25 billion dollars of capital spending in the first half of its new fiscal year and expects new factories in 2028, but warned that clean rooms take a long time to build and ramp only gradually after first wafer output.
Not everyone reads the numbers the same way. A Saxo strategist told The Stack that markets may increasingly ask whether this is close to peak shortage, and Micron's share price did not rise after the report. Micron itself sees no sign of supply catching up.
What To Do Before You Buy Hardware
Treat memory as the scarce line in any server or PC quote and ask suppliers to itemise it. Ask how long the price holds and whether supply is committed, because a quote without committed supply is only a price on paper.
If you need volume, buy through a vendor that holds long-term allocation and negotiate a price band rather than waiting for a spot price that Micron does not expect to fall. Measure real memory use first, since right-sizing is the cheapest source of supply you have.
If your plan assumes cheaper RAM next year, rewrite it. Micron's own forecast is for tighter supply and higher prices in 2027 and 2028.
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