Are You Overpaying For Micron Stock Versus Its Peers

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Micron Technology (MU) posted faster sales growth and kept more of each dollar as operating profit than NVIDIA, Advanced Micro Devices, Qualcomm or Western Digital over each company's latest four fiscal quarters. Micron is still the cheapest on earnings among the four of these companies with a comparable P/E. So how much less are you paying for Micron's earnings, and what do you get for it?

You Pay Less For Micron's Earnings Than NVIDIA's

Micron stock trades at 12.0 times its earnings over its latest four fiscal quarters, against 27.1 times for NVIDIA. Both companies make chips, and buyers pay far less for each dollar of Micron's profit on that measure.

Micron has delivered more for that lower price. Its sales rose 256.3% over its four quarters ended September 3, 2026, against 83.4% for NVIDIA over its own latest four. Micron also kept 74.6% of its sales as operating profit, against 65.2% at NVIDIA. Its stock has returned 337.7% over the past year, the most in the group.

Selling storage hardware rather than chips, Western Digital comes closest on price at 13.4 times its earnings over the four quarters ended July 3, 2026. Those figures predate the results it reported on October 22. Qualcomm is left out of the P/E comparison because it lost money in one of its latest four quarters, pulling down the four-quarter earnings its P/E is based on.

Micron's Memory Profits Have Swung To Losses Before

Micron makes DRAM and NAND memory chips. Most of its $12.3 billion rise in sales in fiscal 2025 came from one business: the Cloud Memory Business Unit. That unit brought in $13.5 billion of sales that year, up from $3.79 billion a year earlier, becoming the company's largest.

Micron's profit has grown even faster than its sales: its operating margin rose from 32.3% in fiscal Q4 2025 to 80.7% in fiscal Q4 2026.

Micron has seen its margins turn before, though. A year after earning a 31.6% operating margin in fiscal 2022, the company posted an operating loss equal to 34.7% of its sales in fiscal 2023. Management said on the fiscal Q4 2026 call that prices would keep rising through fiscal 2027, though more slowly, a slowdown it said it had long expected.

Micron Expects Higher Sales In Fiscal Q1 2027

Management guided for revenue of $60 billion to $63 billion for fiscal Q1 2027, up from the $54.2 billion Micron reported in fiscal Q4 2026. The forecast places the GAAP gross margin in that quarter at 86.0%, close to the 86.8% Micron reported for fiscal Q4 2026.

Management went further on the call, expecting margins to widen over the rest of fiscal 2027 from the first quarter, and market conditions to stay tight through 2028. Those are forecasts, not results.

The lower price comes with a question about how long Micron can keep its margins near today's level. They have not fallen back so far, and management expects a gross margin close to the latest quarter's. Micron is expected to report its fiscal Q1 2027 results in December 2026, and its gross margin against management's forecast is the number to watch.

How To Act On MU?

Not necessarily on Micron Technology alone, if your goal is long-term wealth. Wealth is built by owning the companies that keep outperforming: the leaders of their industries. Finding them takes comparison, a company against its peers and its industry against the rest of the market, not one stock against its own past.

The Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio looks for these quality leaders across industries and sectors and holds 30 of them in equal weight. Since its inception in September 2020 it has returned more than 105%, ahead of a benchmark that combines the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap and Russell 2000. See how we find the leaders.

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