Micron Earnings Beat: $33 EPS Outruns Susquehanna's Glide Path

A quarter that skipped ahead of the forecast

Micron's fiscal fourth quarter delivered numbers that would have sounded implausible two years ago. The memory maker reported adjusted earnings of $33.42 per share on revenue of $54.23 billion, clearing Wall Street's targets on both lines.14 Revenue nearly quadrupled from $11.32 billion a year earlier.1 The company's own figures put the jump at 379% year over year and 31% sequentially.2

The size of the beat depends on which consensus you use. CNBC pegged expectations at $31.61 per share and $51.07 billion in revenue.1 Investing.com's consensus was lower, at $31.16 and $50.45 billion. By that measure, the result was a 7.25% earnings surprise and a 7.49% revenue surprise.34 Either way, Micron said revenue, gross margin and EPS all landed above the high end of its own guidance.2

The timing makes the result notable. Just before the report, Susquehanna analyst Mehdi Hosseini said on CNBC that Micron's quarterly earnings would first reach $30 to $40 and could eventually climb toward $50, or about $200 a year.5 Micron has already reached the first stage of that path.

Where the money came from

Most of the revenue still comes from DRAM. DRAM sales rose 343% to $39.8 billion, or 73% of the total.1 Within DRAM, high-bandwidth memory is the main story. Micron is the only U.S.-based HBM producer.1 CEO Sanjay Mehrotra described a joint effort with Nvidia on what he called the industry's first custom HBM implementation.1 The company's prepared remarks give more detail: a custom HBM4E part, branded NVHBM, aimed at next-generation GPUs and NVLink Fusion platforms.2

NAND also grew sharply. Data center SSD revenue came to nearly $10 billion, more than ten times the prior-year level and over two-thirds of Micron's NAND sales.2 Management linked that growth to KV-cache offload for AI inference and to SSDs replacing hard drives.2 CNBC's headline figure of an 11-fold rise in data center revenue reflects the same trend.1

Full-year results show the scale of the change. Fiscal 2026 revenue reached a record $133.2 billion, up 256%.24 Gross margin rose to 81.1% from 41.1%.4 EPS increased 811% to $75.52.24 It was Micron's sixth straight quarterly sales record.4

The $38 question

The next checkpoint is already set. Investing.com's consensus for the November-ending quarter, due around December 23, is $38.11 per share on $61.45 billion of revenue.3 Its earnings history shows how fast those estimates have risen. Quarterly EPS was $3.03 in the period ended August 2025, then $4.78, $12.20, $25.11, and now $33.42.3

That history also shows the beats getting smaller. The earnings surprise was nearly 39% in the February 2026 quarter and about 23% in May. This quarter it was just over 7%.3 Analysts appear to be catching up with the cycle. That matters more than any single quarter's result, because a stock priced for continued upside responds badly when results simply meet estimates.

Why the stock slipped anyway

Shares fell after hours despite the beat. Investors weighed Micron's heavy spending plans against its outlook.4 Management argued that demand is stronger than before and that supply should stay tight through fiscal 2027 and 2028.4 A note quoted by CNBC said it had seen no data pointing to the memory cycle turning down in the foreseeable future.1

This is the core tension in memory stocks. Hosseini expected Micron to stress disciplined capital spending and operating margins sustained around 70%.5 He also argued that AI demand from a broader, more diverse customer base would support more stable pricing.5 His larger claim is that compute is becoming commoditized and memory is now the differentiator.5 If that holds, Micron could keep heavy investment and high margins together. If not, the spending becomes the excess capacity that has ended past memory booms.

The read

On the financials, Micron has outrun even the bullish forecasts. The $30-to-$40 quarterly range Susquehanna described as a first stage is already being met, and consensus points to the upper half of that range next quarter.35 The open question is how durable those earnings are, not how large. The custom HBM work with Nvidia and the scale of the SSD business suggest a closer connection to AI system design than in earlier cycles. The after-hours selloff shows investors still discount peak-cycle earnings. Reaching $50 a quarter will likely depend on Micron showing that its spending keeps supply tight rather than eventually flooding the market.