New York, February 19, 2026, 13:42 EST — Regular session
- Lam Research shares fell about 3% in afternoon trading, tracking a dip in chip equipment stocks
- The company this week opened a new Boise office aimed at closer work with Micron on memory manufacturing
- Investors are watching Lam’s early-March conference appearances for fresh signals on demand
Lam Research shares fell 2.8% to $233.40 on Thursday, giving back some of the prior session’s gains as semiconductor equipment stocks softened. The stock traded between $231.58 and $241.60, with Applied Materials, ASML and KLA also down on the day.
The pullback comes as investors take a harder look at high-multiple tech and semiconductor names, even after a strong recent run. U.S. stocks were lower more broadly on Thursday, with tech among the weaker pockets of the market after the Fed’s latest minutes and a choppy tone around earnings and valuations. (Reuters)
Lam, a major supplier of wafer fabrication equipment — the machines used to make chips on silicon wafers — has been leaning into U.S. customer support as memory makers add capacity for AI-related demand. The company said on Tuesday it opened a new Boise, Idaho office to support Micron’s leading-edge memory work, calling the site “critical infrastructure near one of our largest customers,” and Micron executive John Whitman said Lam’s tools help deliver “extraordinary precision at the atomic scale.” (Lam Research Investor Relations)
Micron has been pitching the Boise region as a long-term hub for U.S. memory output, and the scale is not small. The Wall Street Journal reported Micron has laid out a $200 billion U.S. manufacturing plan that includes two new Boise fabs, with high-bandwidth memory production for AI systems targeted to begin in 2027. (The Wall Street Journal)
The stock had closed up 1.9% on Wednesday at $240.09, its third straight gain, and it is still below a 52-week high of $251.87 set on Jan. 30, MarketWatch data showed. Wednesday’s volume was about 10 million shares, below the stock’s 50-day average, the report said. (MarketWatch)
For traders, the Boise news is supportive, but it is not a clean, one-day catalyst. What tends to move Lam day to day is the market’s temperature on wafer-fab spending — and whether the AI buildout keeps pulling memory and logic investment forward.
But there is a harder edge to that trade. If memory capex cools, if AI infrastructure spending slows, or if geopolitics and export rules bite harder than expected, tool orders can swing quickly and the stock can re-rate.
Investors will get another near-term readout in early March, when Lam said CFO Doug Bettinger will appear at Morgan Stanley’s TMT conference on March 3 and the Cantor Global Technology & Industrial Growth Conference on March 11. (PR Newswire)
