Micron Shares Jump Over 4% on Big HBM Wins and Taiwan Expansion Plans

Micron Technology (MU) kicked off the week with a notable surge, climbing over 4% in pre-market action. The rally is stirring up interest just days before the company reports its fiscal Q2 earnings on March 18.

Driving the excitement is a strategic move by Micron to build a second manufacturing plant in Taiwan, utilizing the Tongluo site recently acquired from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing. This expansion signals the company's commitment to boosting production capacity in a key region.

But the real game-changer for Monday's rally is Micron's clear line of sight on its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) business, a premium product category intimately tied to AI servers and accelerators. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra recently confirmed that Micron has locked in agreements covering price and volume for its entire 2026 HBM supply, including its cutting-edge HBM4 technology.

HBM stands out as one of the memory market's highest-value segments. With projections showing the HBM market growing from roughly $35 billion in 2025 to about $100 billion by 2028, the numbers imply a solid multi-year expansion driven by AI workloads, rather than a mere inventory swirl.

This outlook is reshaping how Wall Street values Micron. The stock is increasingly judged by its exposure to AI-related products instead of the traditional DRAM and NAND price fluctuations.

Supporting the bullish tone, several analyst firms have recently upped their price targets. Wells Fargo lifted its target to $470 from $410, holding a positive view, while Citi hiked its target to $430 from $385, maintaining a Buy rating. Citi cited a "powerful combination of surging AI demand and supply bottlenecks linked to new chip fabrication capacity" as reasons the cycle could last longer. Morgan Stanley chimed in with estimates that Micron's earnings per share might reach $52 in 2026, boosted by tightening supply conditions.

The fiscal Q2 earnings report will be the next big moment. Wall Street's expectations are set at about $19.10 billion in revenue and normalized EPS around $8.59. Wells Fargo's bullish scenario relies on gross margins holding near 68%, driven by the scale of HBM shipments and improving overall memory pricing.

So Monday's jump isn't just some vague AI buzz-it's grounded in concrete contract wins, production expansion, stronger analyst forecasts, and the growing conviction that Micron is stepping into a more profitable phase of the AI memory cycle. How the market responds after the earnings report will be worth watching closely.