Despite Nvidia and SK Hynix Tailwinds, Micron Alone Stays Silent

Micron's stock is staying silent. Nvidia, the leader of the AI semiconductor market, has sharply expanded the value of its contracts to buy memory in advance, and SK Hynix has forecast that the memory shortage will persist for a long time — yet the shares of Micron, a fellow U.S. memory maker, have barely budged (as reported by U.S. investment outlet Motley Fool on the 6th, local time). According to Nvidia's earnings materials, the total value of its contracts to secure supply and production capacity jumped from $119 billion (about 160.6 trillion won) last quarter to $279 billion (about 376.5 trillion won) as of July 26 — an increase of $160 billion (about 215.9 trillion won) in a single quarter. Nvidia explained that most of the contracts relate to securing memory and setting up production facilities for supplying data center infrastructure systems. Even as Nvidia moves to lock in large volumes of memory ahead of time, including high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI, Micron's stock actually fell 0.3% the day after the earnings release.

"Shortage Through 2030," Yet Micron Shares Hold Steady. Good news also came from SK Hynix. Kwak Noh-jung, CEO of SK Hynix, said at a recent groundbreaking ceremony for a new plant in West Lafayette, Indiana, that no clear downturn signals are emerging in the memory market, forecasting that the current supply shortage will last until the end of 2030. SK Hynix is investing more than $4 billion (about 5.4 trillion won) in Indiana to build an advanced packaging production facility for AI memory, with full-scale mass production scheduled for the second half of 2029. Micron had until recently projected that memory supply would remain tight at least through 2027 and beyond. The company currently trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio (PER) of about 6 times based on expected net income.