Needham is getting much more bullish on Micron $MU ( ▲ 11.3% ) heading into earnings. Analyst Quinn Bolton raised his price target to $300 from $200 ahead of Micron’s fiscal Q1 2026 results on Wednesday, a 50% jump driven by what he sees as an increasingly tight memory market.
The simple setup is supply and demand. Despite plenty of headlines trying to map every corner of the AI supply chain, Bolton says the memory story is straightforward. The DRAM market is effectively an oligopoly controlled by Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix, and AI-driven demand is running ahead of what the industry can realistically supply.
An AI-fueled squeeze
Bolton argues conditions are tighter than even management expected earlier this year. Clean room space is limited, and meaningful capacity expansion is hard to come by in the near term. That means memory makers are constrained not by demand, but by how fast they can upgrade technology.
Instead of shipping more chips, the path to higher sales runs through better chips. Node transitions are doing most of the work, pushing customers toward higher value memory products that carry stronger pricing and margins.
HBM is doing the heavy lifting
High-bandwidth memory is where the story really heats up. Bolton notes that Micron’s HBM3E and HBM4 capacity is already sold out for calendar year 2026. He also believes HBM continues to deliver margins above the company average and the broader DRAM portfolio, giving Micron an outsized profit lever as AI workloads scale.
That backdrop led Bolton to lift his full-year revenue estimates for Micron’s next two fiscal years by 8% and 14%, and to raise earnings per share estimates by 18% and 30%. Even with those upgrades, his forecasts still sit slightly below consensus, leaving room for further upside if supply stays tight.
Wall Street is catching up
Needham is not alone. Analysts across the Street have been racing to reprice Micron ahead of earnings. The average price target on the stock has climbed roughly 67% over the past three months, and shares spent much of that period trading above consensus expectations.
The takeaway is clear. With AI demand colliding with structural supply limits, Micron is no longer just riding a cycle. Investors are starting to treat tight memory as a feature, not a bug, and earnings this week could reinforce that shift.