Micron breaches 52-week high and continues rally

Micron Technology stock, which touched a new 52-week high of $52.36 on Monday, is continuing its rally today, driven by the promising prospects of DRAM technology as well as the new finance chief taking charge.

The company had appointed President and COO of Affirmed Networks David Zisner as new finance chief after the retirement of Ernie Maddock.

The Boise, ID-headquartered company is investing largely in the R&D of second-generation storage products, including DRAM and NAND flash memory as well as CMOS image sensors.

Micron is also currently researching on the quad-level cell flash drives, which the company is planning to release later this year.

Samsung is currently the top seller of NAND flash memory, with a market share of 37.2% in the third quarter of 2017, followed by Toshiba and SanDisk/Western Digital each with 17.5% share. This is followed by Micron (12.9%), SK Hynix (9.9%) and Intel (6.6%), according to a Statista report.

Favorable pricing environment for flash and DRAM had helped Micron lift its guidance for the second quarter of 2018. Micron’s revenue is expected to be $28.51 billion in 2018, according to HADE Platforms machine learning. Over 60% of Micron’s revenue comes from DRAM sales to the personal computer market.

Micron is also currently researching on the quad-level cell flash drives, which the company is planning to release later this year.

Micron is expected to release second quarter results on March 22 and market analysts expect the strong demand and tight supply for memory chips to aid the company’s performance.

Cowen, which recently reiterated its outperform rating on Micron, suggested a modest upside to upwardly revised guidance for the second quarter as the average selling price of memory chips remained healthy in February.