Trump announces trade deal with EU following months of negotiations
On Wednesday, 14 May 2025, Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) presented at the 53rd Annual JPMorgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference. The company shared a strategic overview highlighting strong demand in key markets and advancements in High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) technology, while acknowledging challenges such as potential tariff impacts and competitive pressures.
Key Takeaways
- Micron is optimistic about HBM technology, with the 12-high version expected to surpass the 8-high in volume shipments by fiscal Q4.
- The company is expanding U.S.-based manufacturing capabilities, with a $15 billion project in Idaho.
- HBM revenues are projected to double, reaching an annualized run rate of $2 billion per quarter by year-end.
- Micron has reorganized into four business units for greater market transparency.
- Discussions for 2026 HBM supply and pricing are underway, indicating strong customer confidence.
Financial Results
- May Quarter Update:
- Healthy demand for DRAM and NAND is driving planned price inflection.
- Fiscal Q4 Outlook:
- Anticipated slight improvements in gross margin, though no specific guidance was provided.
- HBM Revenue:
- Over $1 billion in HBM revenues last quarter, with expectations to reach $2 billion per quarter annualized run rate by year-end.
Operational Updates
- HBM Progress:
- The 8-high HBM has been in production for over a year, with the 12-high version showing faster learning rates.
- A crossover in volume shipments between the 12-high and 8-high is expected in fiscal Q4.
- Manufacturing Expansion:
- Major projects are underway, including a $15 billion expansion in Boise, Idaho, and modernization efforts in Virginia.
- Positive customer response to U.S.-based manufacturing supply.
- Technology Ramps:
- Gen 9 NAND technology ramp is aligned with demand.
- One gamma DRAM EUV-based technology is progressing with a 30% bit density gain.
Future Outlook
- HBM Leadership:
- Micron is preparing for HBM4, aiming to lead in high-end customer platforms.
- Market Segment Focus:
- The high-end computing market is seen as a $100 billion opportunity.
- Plans to provide detailed financial reporting for its four business segments.
Q&A Highlights
- Tariff Impacts:
- Products are currently exempt from tariffs, but the company is monitoring upcoming reviews.
- AI Demand:
- Robust demand for HBM and high-end DRAM, with no change in HBM TAM outlook.
- Competitive Landscape:
- Monitoring Chinese competitors in DRAM and NAND, as well as Samsung’s HBM developments.
Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for a detailed understanding of Micron’s strategies and outlook.
Full transcript - 53rd Annual JPMorgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference:
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: Why don’t we go ahead and get started. Welcome to the second day of JPMorgan’s fifty third Annual Technology, Media and Communications Conference. My name is Harlan Sur. I’m the Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst for the firm. Very pleased to have the team from Micron Technology here with us.
We’ve got Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations and Samir Patodia, Senior Director of Investor Relations here with us as well. Samir, we’ll kick it off with Safe Harbor and then we’ll go ahead and kick off the Q and A. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us this morning.
Samir Patodia, Senior Director of Investor Relations, Micron Technology: Yeah, thanks Arlen. So we’ll start with the Safe Harbor. We’ll be making some forward looking statements today. Those statements have risks and uncertainties associated with them, so we refer you to the risk factors disclosed in our public filings.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: Great. Again, thank you for joining us this morning. I’ll kick it off. You’re nearing the end the team is nearing the end of your May. Coming into the quarter, you had anticipated quarter on quarter bit shipment growth in both DRAM and NAND as excess inventories in the more consumer oriented smartphone PC markets had been cleared, calling for record revenues.
On the gross margin front, the team guided gross margins to decline slightly in 140 basis points to about 36.5% on a higher mix of consumer oriented volumes, obviously NAND under utilizations and lower calendar Q1 pricing trends, which I think have recently turned, obviously offset by strong execution on the HBM front. Since then, DRAM pricing has been strong, both DDR4, DDR5 contract pricing and spot pricing have both been strong. NAND pricing declines have started to stabilize and so good trends overall over your May. And so much so that at the March, the Micron team did issue a letter to customers indicating your intentions to increase pricing as the team was seeing an increase in unforecasted demand, right, across various of your business segments. So relative to your guidance in March, I mean, it certainly seems like pricing has come in better, but wanted to get your views on how the May has played out so far.
All right. I need to do any? All right, great.
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: Thanks Harlan and thank you for hosting us here at the conference and for all those kind of market trend highlights since our last call. I’d say that you’re right on the trends. I think we’ve seen healthy demand for both DRAM and NAND. And a lot of it the dynamics have played out much as we had discussed them, not just in the last quarter, but even going back further to some of the trends in terms of strength in data center as well as what we had said before would be a springtime resumption in strength in the consumer markets due to inventories having come down over the sort of calendar Q1. We’re not updating guidance at this time.
But I will say that the quarter is progressing well and we are driving price inflection as we had said we would. And so that’s playing out that’s evolving well. And as we see the trends in the quarter continuing, we are going to be continuing to make our plans for the second half of the year.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: On the pricing inflection trends, is that more a statement around DRAM because we have seen the strong upward trajectory of DRAM, but does that include NAND as well?
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: Yes. So we had talked about actions that we had taken back during the December call
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: and actions we were taking from that point on. We’ve continued with some of those supply actions and others in the industry have done similar.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: That’s right.
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: And so that has helped with the trajectory of NAND pricing.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: Perfect. And I think on the earnings call, you had given us a little bit of a sneak peek into fiscal Q4, right? And off of the and think the view there was that in fiscal Q4, your August, you would see slight improvements in your gross margins with the better pricing trends here in the May, pricing inflection certainly seems like both DRAM and NAND pricing remain on sort of this positive sort of trajectory, at least as we look least as we look kind of near the midterm on a forward basis. Again, you had previously anticipated fiscal Q4 gross margins up slightly, but would seem that the gross margin trajectory in Q4 could be could improve at maybe a slightly better trajectory than what you had laid out in March. I’m not sure if that’s a fair assessment or not.
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: We’re not providing forward looking guidance in terms of margin outlook. But we’ll say that part of our comments around FQ3 as well, Jeff, before around the mix of the business and that pickup in consumer oriented business that we expected for FQ3 and that increase in mix does tend to be lower on the margin side versus say some of our higher end data center products. And so that increase in mix in consumer was kind of the key driver for FQ3 and we’ll kind of provide more commentary relative to forward looking margin structure overall as well as the mix that we expect as we go through the next fiscal quarter and into the second half.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: Perfect. We’ll have a lot more discussions around some of your end market segments. But obviously, a lot of us here in the room are extremely focused on the dynamic of accelerated compute and AI. The Micron team we know has been designed into NVIDIA’s next generation GB 300, which will be starting to ramp in second half of the year. Concomitantly with that, right, the Micron team did start production of your HBM 3E12 high just recently.
Maybe you could just give us an update on the ramp, the yield, is it tracking towards expectations? Yes.
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: No, we’re very pleased with where we are with HBM. We know our eight high has been in production for over a year now, has formed a really solid foundation for us. And we started production on 12 high earlier this year. And progress there has been good. In fact, we are seeing the we had said before that we expect that the 12 high to be the majority of the demand in the second half.
Think we can now say that we see the crossover between 12 high and eight high in terms of volume shipments happening in our fiscal Q4. So that’s that trajectory is ramping well. And in terms of yield progress, the learning rate on yield for 12 high is really faster than we had on eight high.
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: Yes.
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: So along with that ramp up in 12 high as it crosses over in fiscal Q4, I’d say that we’re expecting that we’ll see the 12 high yields to be able to kind of reach that knee in the maturity by the end of CQ3. So kind of going hand in hand with the ramp. So we’re very pleased with where we are in terms of the progress on the 12 high production ramp in terms of the process stability as well as the yield improvement.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: I’m going to go back to kind of the near to mid term environment because in addition to the strong pricing inflection that we’ve seen so far here up through your May, much has changed especially on the tariff and trade and geopolitical front, right? And as you mentioned, AI and accelerated compute demand trends remain strong, strong cloud, hyperscaler, CapEx spending trends, even in the non AI markets, right, smart phone, PC, general purpose server, memory demand trends have been relatively good. And as you guys had predicted two quarters ago, right, demand combined with the discipline of the industry has driven excess inventories down and that’s part of the strength that you guys are seeing. But I think with respect to tariffs and trade, the big question is how much of the strength in near term demand and therefore strong DRAM pricing increases and stabilization in NAND ASPs are due to tariff related pull ins, right? I know one of your large memory competitors recently called out preemptive tariff related demand pull in into the June.
How is the Micron team interpreting the current positive demand and pricing environment, cyclical improvements that you called out back at earnings versus tariff related
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: So I think the key point there with regard to the demand trends, mentioned before that we’re seeing healthy demand and it’s playing out much as we talked about with the data center continuing to be strong and with consumer end markets having worked through inventory and we’re seeing that pick up in this May. And so there could be for certain customers some pull ins, but I would say that the bigger trend is that are the ones that we had laid out and forecasted back in our December call playing out largely as we expected.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: The other side of the potential tariff related dynamics, again a view by a few of your competitors doing their earnings call was that these pull ins are potentially pulling from demand in second half of this calendar year and therefore could potentially drive a weaker bit shipment profile. Additionally, end market trends in second half, PC, smartphone, general purpose server forecasts have been are being trimmed, right, by the big Wall Street firms, including our firm. We cut recently cut our smartphone forecast, our PC forecast and our server forecast a little bit less seasonal, right, in the second half of this year because of tariff and trade related uncertainty. If I recall in the last tariff and trade war back in 2018, ’20 ’19, the semi industry and the memory industry did enter into a downturn coincidentally or not right after the final large round of tariffs that were put in place in August of that year. Are you seeing any indications by your customers that they’re starting to plan for a sub seasonal maybe slightly weaker environment in the second half of this year?
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: I think we’ve talked about some of the macro and tariff uncertainty and trends and obviously everyone’s having to react to that. But I think the commentary from many of our customers, even public commentary, certainly the cloud service providers commentary over the recent horizon is for them to continue with their capital spending plans to be able to build out in the data center and continue to invest in their AI solutions businesses, right. And I think that’s one area that’s reassuring for us with regard to the future data center because so much of our portfolio and so much of our focus is on that area and driving more strength there. On the consumer side, there are just there are a number of different product launches that are still happening. I think that we’re seeing customers who are really have a new wave of offerings to be able to have I think smartphones and PCs that have native AI capabilities designed in versus maybe over the last year there were platforms that weren’t designed with AI agents in mind and they were trying to be able to add some capabilities.
But frankly, the reset in terms of the hardware platforms, the amount of memory, the capabilities and the processors, all of that is still you know, I think ahead. So, you know, I think that there are still, you know, strong demand trends ahead. I think in terms of tariffs, obviously, there’s been a lot of different signals and it’s been difficult for everyone, all of you, everyone trying to parse, waking up every day reading news. But I think encouraged by the direction of travel over the last couple of weeks in terms of de escalation on the tariff front. As far as it impacts the macroeconomy broadly, of course, as you well, I should say, of course, the semiconductor specific products including DRAM products and NAND products were exempted from the reciprocal and baseline tariffs before and those are part of a Section two thirty two review.
So we’ll have to see how that plays out.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: Post tariff announcements, there was some news around the Micron team reaching out to their U. S. Customers on the potential for passing through tariff related price increases. But on April 12, the President did exempt SSDs, memory modules, chips from tariffs. So I assume that the team has not had to increase prices to your U.
S. Based customers. Number one, is that an accurate statement? And then the second question is, what percentage of your overall revenues is for shipments of SSDs and module form factors across The U. S.
Border?
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: Yes. So we have commented a little bit on the overall pricing trends. You’re right that and I mentioned just a minute ago that the products have been exempted. So there haven’t been tariffs levied at least on our DRAM or our NAND products that are coming into The U. S.
So we’re just keenly watching this February review to understand what the implications will be. In terms of percent of products that really varies quarter to quarter depending on where our customers’ supply chains are located and how much we provide to them in their in which region where they’re going to be either building out their data centers or where they’re going to be assembling their final products. And we’re focused on understanding the two thirty two review and also trying we actually provided some comments to the commerce department for that review. Those will eventually be public. And we’re trying to make sure that the policy is constructive relative to the administration’s priority to be able to build The U.
S. Semiconductor manufacturing. And so we’ve been our comments will provide kind of a roadmap of what we think are key ways that this can be enabled or accelerated and not somehow slowing down that semiconductor specific tariffs don’t somehow slow down that initiative.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: Yes. And maybe as a follow-up to that, the U. S. Administration’s goal has been to fast track a return of manufacturing back S.
Right. And the good news is that the Micron team is well into the $15,000,000,000 expansion of your Boise Idaho fab, right. And can you give us an update here? The original plan was to bring Boise online in 2027. Where are you in this build out?
Are you potentially accelerating maybe your plans here? And have you seen a step up in potential customer commitments, right,
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: to Micron longer term because of your U. S. Bit supply capability? Yes. So we are in construction in Idaho.
We have three projects really that we’ve announced in The U. S. One is in Idaho co located with our research and development facility there. So we’ll get the benefits of time to market of our newest technologies as well as some synergies between R and D equipment and manufacturing equipment and R and D engineers and manufacturing engineers. In terms of and then we have a project, a large scale project in New York that’s currently in And then we have another project that we are still discussing with the Commerce Department around modernizing our facility in Virginia, which has been for supporting automotive and aerospace and kind of long life cycle opportunities there.
We have had frankly really good response from multiple different customers who interested in understanding how they can leverage our or be part of our U. S. Manufacturing supply. And there are multiple reasons for that. I think one of them is the fact that the energy in The U.
S. Has the potential to be able to have more green energy here. So that’s been one of the reasons that people are interested. And then there’s others I think just because of the overall push to be able to have more U. S.-based supply chain even for themselves.
Many of our customers as you know have announced larger U. S. Supply chain footprints in the future. And so I think they want to kind of see how they can how we can play into those plans.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: Before I’m going to start talking about products and markets and overall end market dynamics. But before that, I wanted to open it up to the audience to see if there are any questions out there. If you do have a question, please raise your hand and we’ll try to get a mic over to you as quickly as possible. Any questions from the audience? Okay.
So let’s talk about AI and accelerated compute. Obviously, a big driver of the business, the mix on the accelerated computing data center side for Micron has richened significantly over the past few years. In addition to tariff and trade related dynamics, there has been recent concerns around the potential for AI compute demand normalization, maybe some compute digestion. Although, we have seen we haven’t seen any pullbacks from cloud and hyperscalers on their cloud CapEx spending intentions. And so have you seen any signs indications of a pullback in accelerated compute demand?
In other words, has your HBM TAM outlook, right, greater than $35,000,000,000 for this year changed at all? Yes. So we provided
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: HVM TAM update during our last earnings call. We typically provide those on those I’d say there’s a lot of moving parts there with regard changes even as late as yesterday on the AI diffusion and how that AI diffusion pullback is going to impact demand. There’s a lot of different moving parts. So are not going to provide an update at this time, but I will come back to the comment you made, I made earlier that we are seeing robust demand for our HPM product and we’re seeing robust demand for our high end or high capacity DRAM modules as well as expanding demand for our low power solutions for data center. And we’re encouraged by the capital spending plans of virtually every cloud service provider as well as new entrants into cloud service providers that are trying to build out.
Think that’s also goodness for creating multiple vectors of demand and even multiple different architectures. I think the fact that there are going to be different workloads and different applications focus areas for different cloud service providers as they’re coming up, that just gives us an opportunity to go in and leverage the strong capabilities we have across our portfolio. We believe we have the best customers consistently tell us we have the best HBM product, 30% lower power than our competitors for actually even better performance than them. And we have we’re the only ones really shipping low power DRAM into data center applications right now as well. So across the board, I think that heterogeneous set of workloads for data center across expanding number of cloud customers just plays to our strengths.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: If I rewind back one year ago, you gave us the update on your HBM3E12 high ramp. If I rewind back a year ago during your June earnings call, you did say at that time that you were sold out on your HBM supply through calendar twenty twenty five and that the majority of that committed supply was locked in from a pricing perspective. One year later, where are you on negotiations for calendar twenty twenty six HBM supply and pricing discussions? I mean, the team’s supply outlook for next year maybe almost fully committed? Yes.
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: So we’re in discussions right now on 2026, which again is earlier than we are for other products and traditionally. I mean, certainly commands longer lead time in terms of discussion given the criticality it plays into our customers’ roadmaps. And I think the discussions with our customers center around the mix of HPM3E, 12 high, when their platforms are going be ready for HBM4, how our HBM4 will ramp. Mean we think we’re going to have again a leadership product in HBM4, we expect to and be able to ramp at the very leading edge of our customers’ platform ramps. And so those discussions are ongoing, but we feel very good about where they are as well as really the feedback from our customers has been terrific in terms of how we’ve been able to ramp our HBM3E really, this time last year was essentially the very beginning.
That’s right. We started production last March, having not had a product in HBM3, had a very little coming from very little learning based, little scale. Where we are today, our customers have been very, very pleased and that gives them the confidence to be able to count on us for their future ramps. We feel very good about our future roadmap.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: Yes, it’s been a great trajectory, right? You guys did over $1,000,000,000 in HBM revenues last quarter and on track to exit this year based on our estimates at double that rate, right, at roughly about a $2,000,000,000 per quarter annualized run rate. So very, very strong ramp and execution by the team. Let’s Yes,
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: we actually said that both HBM as well as those other categories of high capacity DIMMs and LP. Yes. When you think about each of these, they’ll each be multi billion dollar businesses for us in fiscal twenty twenty six.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: Let’s switch over to data center SSD. We’re seeing as you mentioned numerous AI GPU, but also a lot of XPU programs coming into place with all these ASIC programs that are going to start to ramp into what we think is a strong second half of the year, right, which would be good for your DRAM memory products, but should be good for your storage solutions as well. And I always tend to remind people that your data center SSD share has gone from 5% to 7% in 2022, ’10 percent to 12% in 2023 and you exited last year at 15%, right? I think either number two or number three global market share in enterprise SSD. So strong share gain performance over the past three years.
You’ve got your next generation 9,950 PCIe Gen five SSDs out there. What are we going to see your next gen G9 based data center SSDs come to the market? And more importantly, does the team still expect continued share gains in enterprise SSD going forward?
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: Yes, so you’re right. Thank you for that Harlan. And you always call out our data center SSD execution. I remember even here last year and we’ve been very focused on that. We think that over the last couple of years, our vertically integrated platforms having our own self designed ASICs so that to go along with the leadership we have in memory and the capabilities that we’ve developed in terms of integrating that together in manufacturing has really played well.
And I think our customers also really appreciate the single point to be able to build out their data centers. So for example, being one of the first to be qualified SSDs on the Grace Blackwell platform.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: So
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: I think as we see the overall data centers getting built out, the story has been about DRAM, but you’re right to point out that NAND definitely has a role to play and we’ll be expanding. And we are looking to continue to increase from that record level demand and share that we saw at the end of calendar year 2024.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: On the last earnings call, you had the team had anticipated data center SSD bits starting to reaccelerate over the coming months with a bit more visibility versus the March earnings call. Would you expect maybe that data center SSD reacceleration to start maybe in the August, your fiscal Q4?
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: I think we’ll probably give some more color on that later. But I think certainly the actions that we and the rest of the industry took in NAND late last year and into the first half of this year, that should help with overall balance and that should help with inventory clearing across the channel and that will help with the healthy provide a healthier environment for all NAND products, including data center SSDs.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: Maybe you can just give us an update. The team is doing a lot of technology upgrades. You gave us the update on the HBM3E12 high ramp. Your team is starting to ramp your next gen one gamma DRAM EUV based technology. As I just mentioned, you’re starting to ramp your Gen nine NAND technology.
Can you just give us an update on these new technology ramps, yield, cost downs and just more importantly, just overall execution?
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: Yes, I think both are going very, very well. I think our Gen nine we announced earlier and have progressed well on that one. We’re managing the ramp of that Gen nine in line with demand, right? So we’re trying to make sure that we’re bringing capacity online responsibly, but at the same time feeling really good about where it positions us relative to competition and the capabilities in terms of the NAND device performance we think are best in the industry for that Gen nine. So that will help us obviously in high performance applications like data center SSDs.
One gamma we’re very proud of. We just announced that qualification and the initiation of production ramp on our last call and that’s going very well. It is our first EUV node and that’s gone exceptionally well. We actually had I think a very good strategy between our technology development team and our manufacturing teams. We did a lot of pre work to be able to first of all get a more mature EUV tool than maybe some of our competitors started with.
That tool has performed well. And then we used that tool on some of our older nodes including one alpha and one beta to be able to ensure that all the different elements of the exposure process and improving the manufacturability of that process would be well wrung out before we got to So now as we’re ramping one gamma, we’re focused on normal yield learning and we feel pretty good about where we are with that. And we think it’s going to be, I think we’ve talked about that being 30% bit density gain, which we think gives us multiple generations, one alpha, actually one Z, one alpha, one beta, one gamma. We think we’ve been first to market now for different generations and feeling really good about where that positions us for the future.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: You talk about the 30% power reduction relative to your competitors, 30% better power performance on HBM. And think it has been a big differentiator for the Micron team. As you move to One Gamma, can you give us a sense, are you anticipating a similar, not only power consumption savings, but better performance dynamics on One Gamma? And maybe where does that intersection point come? One you’ve got your HBM roadmap here, you’ve got One Gamma.
Where do you think One Gamma lines up on your HBM roadmap?
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: Yes. We haven’t provided details on which nodes are going be for our future HBM. Yes, we’ll do that a little bit later. But definitely feel very good about I think a year ago I mentioned to you that we felt really good about our one beta as the foundation for HBM, And our implementation of high k metal gate, our implementation of various other things in process combined with some of the decisions we made in design and in packaging together to be able to deliver really the best HBM product on the market. A year later, if anything, think we’re even more pleased as we see competitive offerings now trying to work out at different platforms and trying to get qualified at different customers, we feel great about where that is.
And I think that just bodes well for all that learning and all that of integrating our high performance product went into the one gamma node and the fine tuning that we’ll have there across our portfolio.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: China domestic, let’s talk a little bit about the competition. China domestic memory suppliers, we estimate account for about 6%, seven % of total industry DRAM bit supply, mid high single digits percentage of total industry NAND bit supply. In DRAM, I mean, China competitors have been more focused on legacy DDR4 applications primarily to serve the domestic markets, but they are reportedly making some inroads on DDR5. I mean do you see them at all in the market?
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: D5 is really a significantly more complex We’re on our fourth generation there and we’ve seen the performance requirements continue to step up and we’re also using LP5 as well now into those high performance applications. So we’re very focused on that on being able to tune our roadmap for that. We do see that the domestic Chinese competitors are becoming players in the market and we do take their presence into account we make our plans and we do have that their supply model as part of our long term supply demand balance in the industry as we think about it. But we are really believe that we as we focus on the very highest end applications, the ones that are most demanding in terms of performance, in terms of reliability, in terms of quality and interoperability. The ones that are frankly most difficult for qualifications that provide maximum value to our customers.
Those are the ones that we’re focused on.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: Lots of questions that we get from investors as it relates to the largest memory supplier out there, Samsung, and what happens to HBM supply and demand dynamics when they finally do get qualified on HBM 3e12 high rate. What’s your sense on how the pricing power dynamics may or may not change when they become the third large and qualified supplier of mainstream HBM?
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: Well, I think what’s important to note about HBM is that the qualification process is longer with just about everyone than it is for standard DRAM products. That’s really not just a function of how complex the product is, but it’s also a function of the cycle time, right? Because you’re not just talking about in a standard DRAM product, putting it on a board and then running a qual, you’re talking about having to go through a long chip on wafer on substrate or COOS process and then often integrate it into a system, and then you are able to do the reliability testing.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: Maybe even in some cases a full blown RAC skill solution.
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: Full blown RAC system. So that cycle time Yeah. Of to do a qualification is substantially longer than standard products. Now couple that with the fact that virtually every one of our customers has announced wanting to accelerate the cadence between ramps of new platforms. So instead of, say, eighteen to twenty four months on new server platforms or PC or smartphone platforms, we’re talking about every twelve months, they wanna come out with a new they’re they’re challenging us.
Right? Last year was HPM three e eight high. This year 12 high, next year HPM four, right? So when you have a shortened cadence and a longer time, it’s going to be just difficult for many providers to be qualified on same platform. So there could be different platforms that different competitors are qualified on.
But we think that that shortening of the cadence sort of benefits those who are leading. Got it.
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: I want to talk about something. Back in mid April the team announced that it was reorganizing its business units to a more market segment focused based structure, Four business units, more transparency on your data center focus. Walk us through the rationale and what you will be disclosing on a quarterly basis starting with your fiscal Q4 results.
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: Sure. Thanks. I think this is really an evolution of the way that our end markets are organizing. And so we wanted to organize the same way. And the high end computing markets were becoming our huge opportunity.
We’ve talked about the long term HBM by itself by 02/1930 being a $100,000,000,000 market opportunity. So that’s as big as all of DRAM last year. So we felt like it was good timing to be able to organize around the fact that that high end computing market, HBM, high end high capacity DRAM modules as well as low power into some of these high end applications or supercomputing AI supercomputing applications. We wanted to have really good focus on that. We then have another segment that’s focused on core data center, which is more enterprise server class.
And then we have a we combine the client applications into one, smartphones and PCs, and then we have our automotive and embedded business. So we think that we’re organizing to be able to have better market focus, provide maybe more transparency into each of these areas. We will be providing by each of those segments revenue, gross margin and operating margin across for those four segments going forward. And I that should give us give everyone better insight into how we’re managing the business, what the opportunities are and how we’re allocating capital between them to be
Harlan Sur, Semiconductor and Semiconductor Capital Equipment Analyst, JPMorgan: able to really maximize our opportunities. Yes, Manish, Samir, thanks for the great participation today. Always appreciate the support. Yes, thank
Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Micron Technology: you. Thanks, Arlen. Appreciate it.
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