New York, Feb 12, 2026, 09:58 (ET) — Regular session
- Micron shares rose about 7% in early U.S. trade after executives said HBM4 production and shipments are under way.
- The update follows a near-10% jump a day earlier as investors digested comments on next-gen AI memory supply.
- Traders are watching signs of sustained pricing power and the next earnings report in mid-March.
Micron Technology shares rose 6.7% to $437.78 in morning trading on Thursday, extending a sharp rally after the company’s finance chief said its next-generation high-bandwidth memory chips are already being made at scale and shipped to customers.
The move matters because high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, is a premium product used next to artificial-intelligence processors to move data faster. That market has turned into a bottleneck for AI hardware, and it is where investors see the biggest margin upside — and the fiercest competition.
Micron’s stock has become a proxy for whether the memory industry stays tight or snaps back into its familiar boom-and-bust cycle. Fresh talk of HBM4 readiness is landing at the same time rivals in South Korea push their own next-gen parts, and as big AI buyers try to lock in supply.
Speaking at a Wolfe Research conference in New York on Wednesday, Chief Financial Officer Mark Murphy said Micron has been in “high volume production” on HBM4, has “commenced customer shipments,” and expects volumes to ramp through the current calendar quarter. He added the product is delivering speeds above 11 gigabits per second, a measure of data-transfer speed, and said the company was “highly confident” in performance, quality and reliability. Lynx Equity Strategies analyst KC Rajkumar wrote the clarification should “put to rest the noise” around HBM4. (Investing.com India)
In a transcript of the same event, Murphy said demand is “significantly higher” than Micron’s ability to supply and said he expects supply and demand to remain tight beyond 2026 as the company works on multi-year agreements with customers. (Seeking Alpha)
Morgan Stanley raised its price target on Micron to $450 from $350 and kept an “Overweight” rating, pointing to what it sees as further price increases in DRAM — the mainstream memory used in servers, PCs and devices — including DDR5, a newer DRAM standard. Analyst Joseph Moore flagged DDR5 spot prices up about 30% year-to-date and said HBM demand tied to Nvidia systems was supporting the earnings outlook. (GuruFocus)
Micron’s gains on Thursday come after the stock surged roughly 10% on Wednesday, when Murphy addressed what he called inaccurate reporting about the company’s HBM positioning and reassured investors on timing and product status. (MarketWatch)
Competition is not standing still. Samsung Electronics said on Thursday it had started shipping its most advanced HBM4 chips to customers, and its chip division chief technology officer said feedback had been “very satisfactory.” Samsung said its HBM4 runs at 11.7 gigabits per second and can reach 13, while SK Hynix has said it is in volume production and aims to defend its lead. (Reuters)
Micron last reset expectations in December when it forecast second-quarter revenue above estimates on booming AI-related demand and said the industry faced HBM supply constraints. The company also said then it planned to raise 2026 capital spending as it chases long-term contracts with customers. (Reuters)
But there is a catch. If HBM4 qualification slips at key customers, or if Samsung and SK Hynix lock up more of the early AI platform ramps, Micron could lose some of the pricing leverage investors are buying into. A sharp slowdown in data-center spending would also hit memory pricing quickly, and this is still a business that can swing hard when supply catches up.
Investors now turn to the next checkpoint: Micron’s fiscal second-quarter results, which are penciled in for March 18, according to Yahoo Finance’s earnings calendar. Traders will be listening for detail on HBM4 volume shipments, pricing trends in DRAM and NAND, and how much supply Micron thinks it can commit under longer-term customer agreements. (Yahoo)
