Micron $MU ( ▼ 3.01% ) snapped back hard in after-hours trading after delivering a massive fiscal Q1 beat and issuing Q2 guidance that cleared every single Wall Street estimate. The memory-chip maker erased Wednesday’s losses almost instantly as investors recalibrated expectations for just how tight the memory market has become.
For its fiscal Q1 2026, Micron posted revenue of $13.64 billion versus expectations of $12.95 billion, while adjusted EPS came in at $4.78 compared with estimates of $3.95. Even more impressive, both numbers landed well above the high end of Micron’s own prior guidance, which had already been considered optimistic.
Guidance That Reset the Bar
The real shock came with Micron’s Q2 outlook. Management guided for adjusted revenue between $18.3 billion and $19.1 billion, with adjusted EPS ranging from $8.22 to $8.62. Analysts had been expecting revenue of just $14.38 billion and EPS of $4.71.
In other words, even Micron’s low-end forecast blew past the most bullish projections on the Street. That kind of gap is rare and it immediately shifted sentiment not just on Micron, but across the broader memory space.
Memory Tightness Is the Story
Micron’s results reinforced what investors have been circling for months: demand for memory is running well ahead of supply. The AI buildout has created a surge in demand not just for GPUs and custom accelerators, but also for the memory required to feed those processors and store massive data sets.
Micron and its major competitors, including Samsung and SK Hynix, have already sold out production of their most advanced high-bandwidth memory for calendar year 2026. That supply constraint is translating directly into pricing power and margin expansion.
The ripple effects showed up immediately after hours, with Seagate $STX, Western Digital $WDC, and Sandisk $SNDK all moving higher alongside Micron.
Micron had been one of the worst-performing stocks in the S&P 500 over the past week as investors dumped AI-linked names. This report may mark a turning point. With Micron now exiting its consumer chip business to focus entirely on AI-driven demand, the company is making it clear where the growth is and the market is listening.