New York, Feb 20, 2026, 10:02 EST — Regular session
- Micron shares rose about 3% in early regular-session trade
- Investors stayed focused on tight supply and pricing for high-end AI memory
- Micron’s next earnings report in March is the next big catalyst
Micron Technology Inc shares were up 2.7% at $428.49 in morning trade on Friday, after touching $430.46. The stock opened at $415.35 and was last in a $413.16 to $430.46 range.
The move comes as some U.S. investors have been shifting from the biggest AI “hyperscaler” stocks toward companies that they expect to benefit from AI capital spending, including chipmakers and data-storage firms. “Our goal is that every time someone like Meta or Amazon invests in a data center, the cash registers ring across our portfolio,” said Adam Patti, CEO of VistaShares. (Reuters)
Needham analyst N. Quinn Bolton raised his price target on Micron to $450 from $380 and kept a buy rating, TipRanks reported, citing a memory market that is “continuing to tighten and pricing moving meaningfully higher.” TipRanks also said Micron CFO Mark Murphy told an investor conference that pricing had improved since the company’s last earnings call and that demand continued to outpace supply, with high-bandwidth memory capacity for 2026 “fully allocated.” (TipRanks)
In parallel, investors were watching developments in high-bandwidth memory, or HBM — stacked chips designed to feed data faster to AI processors. A South Korean newspaper report said Samsung Electronics plans to price its next HBM4 chips 20% to 30% higher than the prior model, Barron’s reported, a signal that the premium end of the memory market remains tight. (Barron’s)
Micron is the largest U.S.-based maker of memory chips, selling DRAM and NAND. DRAM (dynamic random access memory) is used as “working” memory in PCs and servers, while NAND flash is used for storage in devices ranging from phones to data centers.
The bullish case across the memory sector is still tied to the AI buildout. A Reuters Breakingviews column this week pointed to data-center investment expected to reach about $800 billion in 2026, while noting that memory stocks have been rising amid expectations of tight supply. (Reuters)
For Micron, traders are watching for any fresh signs that DRAM and NAND contract prices are still climbing, and for updates on HBM4 ramp and allocation. The next set of big AI capex plans from the largest cloud customers remains a read-through, too.
But the trade can turn fast. Memory is notoriously cyclical: a pricing spike can pull in new supply, and a softer-than-expected AI spending cycle could hit the highest-margin products first. Samsung and SK Hynix also have little reason to sit still in HBM, and any stumble in yields or delivery schedules can show up quickly in a stock that has become a pricing proxy.
The next hard catalyst is Micron’s fiscal second-quarter results, expected on March 19, when investors will parse pricing, supply discipline and HBM momentum for the rest of 2026. (Zacks)
