Even Micron Earnings Aren’t Enough to Counter Market Headwinds

Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU) released fiscal second-quarter financial results after markets closed Thursday. The company said that it had $2.82 in earnings per share (EPS) on $7.35 billion in revenue, compared with consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters that called for $2.74 in EPS on $7.28 billion in revenue. The same period of last year had EPS of $0.90 and $4.65 billion in revenue.

Revenues for the second quarter of 2018 were 8% higher sequentially, reflecting increased demand broadly across products and end markets.

What stands out here is that gross margin for the quarter was 58.4%, which rose dramatically from 38.5% in the same period last year.

Micron did not issue any guidance for the fiscal third quarter. However, the consensus estimates call for $2.63 in EPS on $7.27 billion in revenue for the coming quarter.

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Investments in capital expenditures were $2.11 billion, which resulted in adjusted free cash flows of $2.2 billion for the second quarter of 2018. On the books, cash and short-term investments totaled $8.04 billion at the end of the quarter, compared with $5.4 billion at the end of the previous fiscal year.

Sanjay Mehrotra, Micron’s president and chief executive, commented:

Micron executed exceptionally well in the second quarter, delivering record results and strong free cash flow driven by broad-based demand for our memory and storage solutions. Our performance was accentuated by an ongoing shift to high-value solutions as we grew sales to our cloud, mobile and automotive customers and set new records for SSDs and graphics memory. Secular technology trends are driving robust demand for memory and storage, and Micron is well-positioned to address these growing opportunities.

Shares of Micron closed Thursday down 3.5% at $58.92, with a consensus analyst price target of $66.68 and a 52-week trading range of $26.04 to $63.42. Following the announcement, the stock was initially down just over 1% at $58.20 in the after-hours session.

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