3 Semiconductor Stocks to Buy Heading Into September
Broadcom reports in days, Micron follows at month's end, and NVIDIA just printed numbers that rewrote expectations for the entire AI hardware trade. Three stocks sit at the center of a supply crunch that management teams say runs well past…
September lines up as the busiest stretch of the AI hardware calendar. Broadcom reports fiscal Q3 after the close on September 2, 2026, Micron follows on September 30, 2026, and NVIDIA just handed the market a fresh reason to lean into compute exposure with a blowout July quarter. The setup is clear: hyperscaler capex is expanding, memory supply is tight, and custom silicon backlogs are stretching visibility into 2028. Three names carry the cleanest catalyst path into the new month.
NVIDIA: The Supply-Constrained Compounder
NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) closed Tuesday at $227.98, up 15.72% over the past month and 22.39% year to date. The Q2 FY27 report delivered $96 billion in revenue with data center at $89 billion, and the company guided Q3 to $108 billion, plus or minus 2%. Non-GAAP gross margin held at 75%.
The bull case is straightforward. Jensen Huang told the Street this is "a supply-constrained outlook" and said "we expect supply to remain a bottleneck at least through the end of fiscal year 28." Backing that up: cloud industry backlog above $2 trillion, top-five hyperscaler capex tracking to nearly $800 billion in 2026 and $1.3 trillion in 2027, and Vera Rubin revenue per gigawatt stepping up to $40 billion from Blackwell’s $25 billion. Analyst consensus sits at a $305.79 target with 48 Buy and 10 Strong Buy ratings. Forward P/E is 24, reasonable for a business printing 65.6% operating margins.
Risk: China data center compute revenue is not included in the Q3 guide, and gross margins are expected to bottom in Q4 in the 71% to 72% range as Vera Rubin ramps. A memory-cost squeeze or a hyperscaler pause would test the multiple.
Broadcom: September 2 Is the Catalyst
Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) trades at $371.54 after a 4.49% move in the most recent session. The company reports fiscal Q3 after the close on September 2. Management has already guided the quarter to $29.4 billion in consolidated revenue, with AI semiconductor revenue expected to reach $16 billion, up over 200% year on year.
What makes this different from a normal earnings report is the visibility. Hock Tan said "our visibility runs all the way to 2028 right now. Three months ago, I can tell you our visibility ran pretty much 27." AI bookings exceeded $30 billion in Q2 against $10.8 billion shipped, and Broadcom reiterated fiscal 2027 AI revenue in excess of $100 billion. The customer roster is stacked: multi-generation TPU work with Google, 1.3 gigawatts for OpenAI in 2027 as part of a 10 gigawatts by 2029 commitment, and a Meta MTIA partnership targeting 3 gigawatts through the end of 2028. Analyst target is $525.97 on a forward multiple of 19.
Risk: Q3 gross margin is guided to roughly 74%, down as AI ASICs mix higher. Customer concentration among a handful of frontier labs is real, and Tan conceded Google will likely maintain some diversity of sources over time.
Micron: The Memory Bottleneck Trade
Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) is the most explosive chart of the three, up 227.94% year to date and 695.68% over the past year to $935.39. Fiscal Q4 lands September 30, and management has already telegraphed a record: revenue of $50 billion, plus or minus $1 billion, EPS of $31 per share, plus or minus a dollar, and gross margin of approximately 86%.
The setup is a memory shortage priced into contracts. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said "DRAM and NAND industry demand continues to significantly exceed industry supply. We expect tight conditions to persist beyond calendar 2027." Micron has shipped over $1 billion in HBM4 revenue, with the HBM4 12-high ramp tracking twice as fast as HBM3E. The company has signed 16 Strategic Customer Agreements, with 14 of them representing cumulative revenue at minimum price of roughly $100 billion over the term and cash deposits of about $18 billion. Forward P/E is a striking 6 against an analyst target of $1,513.41.
Risk: memory is cyclical, and management flagged "a meaningful moderation in the rate of price increases" in the Q4 guide. Capex is climbing to around $10 billion per quarter, and shares have already pulled back 4% in the last week ahead of the report.
How the Three Fit Together
NVIDIA is the merchant GPU platform, Broadcom is the custom silicon and networking arm of the same buildout, and Micron sits on the memory bottleneck that gates both. All three have management teams calling supply the binding constraint on near-term revenue. If the September earnings reports from Broadcom and Micron confirm the visibility Tan and Mehrotra have already laid out, the AI hardware trade extends. If they disappoint, the multiples on names outside this trio compress first. The pattern that showed up years before the biggest runs in this space is worth studying on its own, and we cataloged it in a free playbook here.
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Joel South covers large-cap stocks, dividend investing, and major market trends, with a focus on earnings analysis, valuation, and turning complex data into actionable insights for investors.
He brings more than 15 years of experience as an investor and financial journalist, including 12 years at The Motley Fool, where he served as an investment analyst, Bureau Chief, and later led the Fool.com investing news desk. He has also co-hosted an investing podcast and appeared across TV and radio discussing market trends.
