Micron Technology, Inc. (MU) Q2 2024 Earnings call Key takeaways

  • Company Performance
    • “Micron delivered fiscal Q2 revenue, gross margin, and EPS well above the high end of guidance.”
    • “Micron has returned to profitability and delivered positive operating margin a quarter ahead of expectation.”
  • Market Conditions and Demand
    • “Micron drove robust price increases as the supply-demand balance tightened.”
    • “AI server demand is driving rapid growth in HBM, DDR5, and data center SSDs.”
    • “We expect DRAM and NAND pricing levels to increase further throughout calendar year 2024 and expect record revenue and much improved profitability now in fiscal year 2025.”
  • Technology Advancements and Production
    • “Over three-quarters of our DRAM bits are now on leading-edge 1-alpha and 1-beta nodes, and over 90% of our NAND bits are on 176-layer and 232-layer nodes.”
    • “We have begun 1-gamma DRAM pilot production using EUV and are on track for volume production in calendar 2025.”
  • End Markets and AI Growth
    • “We are in the very early innings of a multiyear growth phase driven by AI.”
    • “Memory and storage technologies are key enablers of AI in both training and inference workloads.”
  • HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) Significance and Development
    • “Our customers are driving an aggressive AI roadmap on their GPU and ASIC-based server platforms that require significantly higher content and higher-performance memory and storage solutions.”
    • “Nvidia announced its next-generation Blackwell GPU architecture-based AI systems, which provides a 33% increase in the HBM3E content.”
    • “Micron’s industry-leading high-bandwidth memory HBM3E solution provides more than 20 times the memory bandwidth compared to standard D5-based DIMM server module.”
    • “We commenced volume production and recognized our first revenue from HBM3E in fiscal Q2 and now have begun high-volume shipments of our HBM3E product.”
    • “Customers continue to give strong feedback that our HBM3E solution has a 30% lower power consumption compared to competitors’ solutions.”
    • “Our HBM3E product will be a part of Nvidia’s H200 Tensor Core GPUs.”
    • “We are on track to generate several hundred million dollars of revenue from HBM in fiscal 2024 and expect HBM revenues to be accretive to our DRAM and overall gross margins starting in the fiscal third quarter.”
    • “Our HBM is sold out for calendar 2024, and the overwhelming majority of our 2025 supply has already been allocated.”
    • “We continue to expect HBM bit share equivalent to our overall DRAM bit share some time in calendar 2025.”
  • Future Expectations and Strategic Moves
    • “We expect 12-high HBM3E will start ramping in high-volume production and increase in mix throughout 2025.”
    • “We have a robust roadmap and we are confident we will maintain our technology leadership with HBM4, the next generation of HBM, which will provide further performance and capacity enhancements compared to HBM3E.”