Micron Earnings $0.33
BOISE, Idaho, Sept 22 (Reuter) - Micron Technology Inc.
MU.N said late Monday its fiscal fourth-quarter net income more than tripled, but was far less than Wall Street expected
because of a sharp drop in computer memory chip prices.
Micron, the second-biggest U.S. producer of dynamic random
access memory chips after Texas Instruments Inc., said after
the stock market closed that it earned $72.1 million, or 33
cents a share, compared with $18.6 million, or 9 cents a share,
in the same quarter a year ago.
Wall Street had expected the Boise, Idaho-based company to
earn 50 cents a share in the quarter ended Aug. 28, according
to a recent analyst survey by Zacks Investment Research, which
tracks analyst earnings forecasts.
Fourth-quarter revenue rose 35 percent to $946.2 million
from $700.5 million.
Micron makes DRAM chips, critical components that store
information in personal computers. The company also gets about
a third of its revenue from the sales of PCs.
Micron said its profits were hurt by a 13 percent decline
in average selling prices of memory chips during the fourth
quarter. The industry has had a glut of these chips in recent
months.
Gross margins, a measure of how much money is left after
cost of goods are subracted from revenue, on its chips fell to
44 percent in the fourth quarter from 49 percent in the third
quarter. The company could not cut costs quickly enough to
offset falling chip prices, Micron said.
Revenue from the sale of PCs rose 6.9 percent to $372.5
million in the fourth quarter from $348.9 million in the same
period a year ago. The company said unit shipments of its PCs
rose 37 percent for the year, but average selling prices also
declined.
The company said it continues to improve the efficiency of
its chip-making operations.
Micron's stock jumped $3.125, or 8 percent, to close at
$40.50 on the New York Stock Exchange. |
