MU
Micron’s new bull thesis: buybacks, AI, and a whole lot of confidence
Micron just got a fresh vote of confidence from D.A. Davidson’s Gil Luria, who lifted his price target from $2,100 to a jaw-dropping $3,000. That’s not a typo. It implies another 176% upside, which is the kind of number that makes short sellers reach for the antacids.
Luria’s pitch is pretty simple: the market is still treating Micron like the moody memory-chip company of yesteryear, when the business is increasingly tied to AI infrastructure. In his view, investors are underestimating how much earnings power lives inside Micron’s products — and how sticky those profits could become.
The buyback wildcard
The really spicy part? December 9. That’s when restrictions tied to Micron’s CHIPS Act funding agreements are set to expire, which would let the company crank up share repurchases. Management already said it wants to return 100% of excess cash to shareholders over time, mostly through buybacks, and it still has about $2.2 billion of authorization left.
Luria also pointed to Micron’s giant cash pile — $68.3 billion in net cash at fiscal 2026 year-end — as extra fuel for the case. If the company starts leaning harder into repurchases, that can be a nice little turbocharger for earnings per share. Same business, fewer shares. Wall Street loves that.
Why the stock still looks cheap-ish
Luria’s other argument is basically: look around. He says Micron is trading at around 6 times earnings while AMD and Intel are in the 40-times-or-higher neighborhood. Whether you think that gap is fair or ridiculous probably depends on how much faith you have in the AI spending cycle staying hot.
Big picture: this is a classic “the market hasn’t caught up yet” story. If Micron keeps growing into an AI must-own and starts returning more cash to shareholders, the bears may eventually run out of room — and time.