| | | Micron Stock Just Got Upgraded Again Before Earnings -- and For the Exact Same Reason -- Barrons.com
Published 51 minutes ago
Dow Jones Newswires
One day ahead of the company's fiscal first quarter earnings report, Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson raised his rating on Micron Technology (MU) shares to Outperform from Neutral, setting a new price target of $65, up from $44.
Bryson's upgrade follows just one day after Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Mehdi Hossein upgraded the stock to Positive from Neutral, with a new target of $84, up from $45.
Bryson does not expect much upside to expectations in tomorrow's Q1 results, and he thinks the Q2 outlook likewise will be "muted" and in line with Street estimates. But he concurs with Hossein's call yesterday that the outlook for memory chip pricing is about to improve.
Bryson thinks NAND memory chip prices are headed higher, and notes that "periods of positive pricing changes are the best periods to own memory stocks." He adds that there also are early signs of improved DRAM pricing. And he contends that "demand for both NAND and DRAM should accelerate through the course of 2020," driven by 5G handset rollouts, new gaming consoles and improved spending by the large public cloud players. He also says that a favorable pricing environment is likely "as planned memory capacity adds appear modest."
Bryson dramatically revised his EPS forecasts for both this fiscal year and next: He now sees fiscal 2020 profits of $2.84 a share, up from $2.22, with fiscal 2021 at $7.39 a share, up from $4.58. Street consensus estimates are $2.44 a share for 2020 and $5.29 for 2021.
Micron shares are up 0.3%, to $53.12.
Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com |
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