Yahoo Finance StockBeat: Micron Rallies; Light at End of Tunnel for Memory Prices?
Investing.com - Micron (NASDAQ:MU) surged 5% Wednesday as Deutsche Bank said shares of the chip company could mount a rally from current levels as memory prices appear to be bottoming.
Deutsche Bank analyst Sidney Ho said fourth-quarter random access memory (DRAM) price action suggests a trough, easing investor fears the glut in memory supplies would continue to hurt prices at a time when Japan and Korea remained locked in a trade war.
Micron's gain was second-best among stocks in the Nasdaq 100 Index, which was up 1.26%.
But the Japan-Korea trade issues are unlikely to have a meaningful impact on supplies, Ho added.
In July, Japan imposed export restrictions to South Korea, which controls about 70% of the global market for DRAM and 50% for NAND flash memory.
The sober outlook on memory demand echoed remarks from Micron (NASDAQ:MU) CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, who earlier this year said that the company was “seeing early signs of demand improvement.”
Memory prices have been hurt by falling demand for memory chips at various levels, with smartphone and server shipments in a funk.
Deutsche Bank has a buy rating on Micron and a price target of $55 on the stock. The consensus 12-month target price on the stock is $48.04.
Micron is up more than 48% year to date, outpacing the broader sector, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index up around 31% for the year so far.
The bullish note on memory prices, sparked a wave of green across semis with Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) set to end the day markedly higher.
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