Micron Technology's (MU, Financial) stock price fell due to its soft second-quarter results for 2015. However, management looks confident of making a comeback ad believes that Micron can perform better in the upcoming quarters. Let's see why.
The storage technology is expected to boom in the coming years. With the technological explosion, the recent researches have revealed that the sale for the electronic devices and gadgets are continually ramping up. Not only mobile phones but this storage system is also knocking the doors of other industries such as automotive as well. Hence, there are bulk of long term growth opportunities for companies like Micron who might be suffering in the near term due to certain unwanted challenges.
Second quarter financial performance
Micron Technology recently reported decent results in the second quarter of fiscal 2015 winning on the consensus estimates of earnings of $0.77 per share by posting earnings of $0.81 per share. However, the company fell short of posting EPS of $0.85 per share which it posted on in the same quarter last year.
This 1.4% improvement in the revenue is mainly due to improving market conditions, diversified portfolio and excellent operational performance.
The company product portfolio comprises of mainly two products namely NAND Flash products and DRAM products. The bit sales grew by good 12% which also triggered a 3% growth in the NAND Flash product revenue. But a 9% sequential decline in the ASPs partially offset this growth. While due to the growth in demand for new flash drives the demand for DRAM drives seems to be declining as in the second quarter DRAM product revenues declined by a solid 13% particularly due to the slow bit sales.
Micron’s weakness- its strength
Micron technology is a company that deals in high capacity storage including NAND Flash and DRAM storage drives. The company posted decent results which on one hand surpassed consensus estimates while on the other hand failed to even meet its same quarter last year performance. But in my opinion this is just a short term crunch for the company to which the investors should not be focused much. With the growing number of player and already existing player in the storage industry such as SanDisk, the company ignorance to some aspect might have resulted in this weakness. However, if we look closely this weakness has given Micron lot of strength. It is a risky affair now but risk bearing investors it is more than a gold mine found.
The short term challenges are temporary but the long term prospects for Micron looks strong and booming. The industry is growing and with the rapid technological advancement going forward, Micron has a bright future. The industries are growing in size and every big company is in need of high capacity storage offerings to save the data. Micron has a good opportunity in this area.
The new technology in other segments such as automobile, entertainment and other markets is expected to rise demand for NAND and DRAM storage device. To be more profitable in the space, Micron has plans to introduce new 3D NAND storage which is more efficient and is cheap.
According to the recent updates, Micron has also launched new consumer class flash storage device which is based on TLC NAND technology. This addition has strengthened Micron’s product portfolio and the company is expecting market demand for TLC to be strong in 2015 and further.
Conclusion
Micron's soft results led to a decline of more than 30%. But it is interesting to note that there is minimal change in the valuation despite a big fall. So, if we compare the growth prospects with the valuation, Micron Technology is available a cheap levels with solid growth prospect. Hence I would like to suggest investors to count on Micron Technology for the long run.
