Micron's Fiscal Q4 2026 Earnings, Fully Dissected
It beat its own guidance — so why did the stock whipsaw for two days?

① Getting started — a number that actually beat its own guidance

Our Micron Q3 FY2026 earnings deep dive covered how Micron posted $41.46B in quarterly revenue and guided the following quarter (Q4) to $50B ±$1B. Three months later, on September 30, 2026, the actual Q4 results landed — not just in line with guidance, but above even the top end ($51B) at $54.23B. This piece covers what changed in those three months, and why "record-breaking results" didn't produce an immediate, unambiguous rally.

② Q4 FY2026 results — beating even the top of guidance

The full-year picture is even sharper. Fiscal-year revenue reached $133.2B (+256% YoY), full-year EPS $75.52 (+811% YoY) — meaning annual, not quarterly, revenue more than doubled. Next quarter's (FY2027 Q1) guidance also came in above consensus: roughly $61.5B in revenue and $38.15 adjusted EPS. As covered in why AI gets numbers wrong, this is exactly the kind of figure worth confirming against the original filing rather than an AI-generated summary of the press release.

③ By segment — this time NAND blew up too

Through Q3, Micron's story was essentially DRAM and HBM. Starting in Q4, a second engine — NAND flash — joined in.

The real news this quarter is that NAND's growth rate (+526%) actually outpaced DRAM's (+343%). AI servers need not just memory (DRAM) but massive storage (SSDs), and that demand showed up in the numbers for the first time this quarter. The broader data-center demand picture this connects to is covered in our H2 2026 semiconductor sector outlook's "AI cycle" thesis.

④ HBM — how far it's come in three months

At the Q3 report, Micron said its HBM4 12-high ramp was running "twice as fast" as HBM3E's, with HBM4 revenue just crossing $1 billion a quarter. By Q4, three things had moved forward.

• HBM revenue growth outpaced the company's overall growth — HBM is no longer a "new business," it's a growth engine in its own right.
• Micron began ramping the industry's first custom HBM4E implementation (code-named NVHBM), bound for next-generation GPUs and NVLink Fusion platforms.
• Micron has already locked in agreements for most of calendar-2027 HBM bit supply, at meaningfully higher year-over-year prices — narrowing the margin gap between HBM and conventional DRAM.

The HBM market used to be essentially SK hynix's alone. As Micron cements itself as a credible second HBM4 supplier, it gets pulled deeper into AI chipmakers' "multi-source" strategy. SK hynix's own position is covered in our SK hynix deep dive and SK hynix's Nasdaq ADR debut.

⑤ Why the stock whipsawed in a day — capex shock vs. demand conviction

The results themselves beat guidance, but the stock's reaction wasn't straightforward. Here's the sequence marketbrief tracked.

Analysts read the same results differently. Baird raised its target from $1,280 to $1,520, emphasizing that data-center revenue surged 11-fold year over year. Wells Fargo, meanwhile, kept its Overweight rating but cut its target from $1,525 to $1,400 — not because of the results, but over valuation concerns. At the same time, Wells Fargo raised its FY27/FY28 EPS estimates by more than 10% and projected annual free cash flow exceeding $125B. "The business will keep getting better, but the price right now is rich" is a seemingly contradictory but genuinely common analyst stance.

⑥ FY2027 capex — effectively double

At the Q3 report, Micron's FY2026 capex plan stood at $27B. The FY2027 outlook disclosed this time is far larger.

• About $25B in the first half (1H) of FY2027 alone
• Management explicitly said the second half (2H) would be "higher than the first half" — with construction (cleanroom) spending growing faster than equipment spending
• Operating expenses are also expected to rise roughly $2.5B in FY2027

First-half spending alone approaches all of FY2026's capex ($27B), so the full-year figure is likely to land near double FY2026's level. This is the real driver of the after-hours drop covered in Section ⑤ — spending this much more means less near-term free cash flow, and signals "investing for growth" and "less room for shareholder returns" at the same time.

⑦ Analyst targets, from $1,200 to $2,100

Here's the wave of price targets marketbrief tracked, all logged the day after earnings (10/1).

The gap between the lowest target ($1,200, Morgan Stanley) and the highest ($2,100, DA Davidson) is $900 — a 75% spread over the low end. As covered in our analyst-report decoding guide, when every rating clusters around "buy" but targets this spread out, the spread itself, not the rating, is the signal — it means analysts still haven't agreed on how much to discount for the rising capex.

⑧ The current valuation — P/E actually went down

Here's a genuine paradox. Per marketbrief's tracked data (as of 2026-10-02), Micron's current P/E sits at just 14.5x. Annual EPS is up 811%, yet the valuation multiple is on the lower side. That doesn't mean the stock has failed to keep up with earnings growth — it means actual earnings have grown even faster than the stock price, so fundamentals, not a richer multiple, explain the rally. That said, this figure reflects two full days of post-earnings swings (the 10/2 close of $1,074.89), so whether the market has finished re-rating the capex concern, or is only midway through it, is something to watch over the next quarter.

⑨ Takeaways for overseas investors

• "Record-breaking results" and "the stock going up" are two different events. As this case shows, even results that beat guidance can be overshadowed by a separate variable like capex.
• When analyst targets diverge, look at why. Wells Fargo's target cut wasn't "the business is weak" — it was "the price is rich." Two Overweight ratings can carry very different messages.
• The HBM/NAND demand expansion isn't just a Micron story. It runs across SK hynix, Samsung, and the semiconductor sector built on the same supply chain — which is a good reason to also weigh a diversification angle, not just a single-stock bet. The "stock-selection risk" illustrated with semiconductor-sector data in our individual stocks vs. ETFs decision guide applies directly here.

※ This article is based on Micron's results as reported September 30, 2026, and is not a buy or sell recommendation for any stock. Analyst targets and ratings reflect marketbrief's tracked data as of October 2, 2026 and may have changed since. All investment decisions and their consequences rest with the investor.