Earning $31 per share in a single quarter would have sounded like satire two years ago. Analysts project about $31.5 per share on roughly $51 billion in revenue when Micron reports fiscal Q4 results on September 30, after the close. That compares with about $3.03 per share in the same quarter a year ago. The number is not the story. The story is what is holding those numbers up.
Beyond quarterly performance, Micron has disclosed a fundamental transformation in its business model: 16 strategic customer agreements. Fourteen of the 16 signed agreements have a cumulative revenue at minimum price per the contracts of approximately $100 billion over the remaining agreement term. The agreements are multi-year, take-or-pay supply contracts covering roughly 20% of Micron’s DRAM volume and about one-third of its NAND volume through the end of calendar 2030. Customers must pay whether or not they take the chips. That is not how memory has ever worked before.
Micron signed 16 long-term agreements with customers including data center operators and automakers that lock in sales for three to five years. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said the company expects approximately half or more of its revenue to eventually fall under these agreements. Micron said it expected approximately $22 billion in cash deposits and related financial commitments under the signed agreements.
Why This Quarter Is Different
A roughly 24% sequential EPS jump is expected quarter-over-quarter, a high bar for any chipmaker. The market has largely absorbed that expectation. What it has not fully priced is the guidance call, which follows immediately after the numbers land.
BMO Capital’s checks indicate server DDR5 pricing could offer the greater upside surprise in Q4. The analyst noted that both HBM3e and HBM4 likely saw a sequential rise in pricing, while client and consumer memory saw weaker demand. That divergence matters: the server side is carrying the company, and it is precisely where the new contracts concentrate.
Micron has said it began volume shipment of HBM4 designed for Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform in the first quarter of calendar 2026, and TrendForce’s DRAMeXchange data shows DRAM spot prices remain elevated. The TrendForce DRAMeXchange close for September 24 put the mainstream DDR4 chip at $46.107, up from $45.786 on September 16. Spot prices at record highs into the quarter’s final week tell you where Micron’s pricing power stood when the books closed.
The Contract Thesis
Memory has historically been the most cyclical corner of semiconductors. Prices spike, capacity floods in, margins collapse, shareholders get punished. That cycle destroyed value so reliably that no serious investor gave memory companies growth-stock multiples. The SCAs are a direct bet against that history.
The evolving industry landscape, characterized by strong long-term customer demand and structurally constrained supply growth, has elevated the strategic importance of memory to customers’ product roadmaps, prompting them to seek committed long-term access to advanced memory technology. The agreements are structured as take-or-pay, with binding commitments for specific volumes over multi-year contract terms.
BMO’s Kumar notes that HBM4 carries roughly a 20% to 25% price premium over HBM3e. As the product mix shifts toward HBM4, average selling prices should move higher. That is a tailwind into fiscal 2027 regardless of what spot prices do in a softer macro.
The Risks
The bear case is not complicated. The SCAs represent approximately $100 billion in minimum contracted revenue at minimum price for 14 of the 16 signed agreements, but HBM’s share of those commitments remains unclear, raising transparency concerns. The agreements cover about 20% of DRAM and one-third of NAND volume, and enforceability could be tested if memory prices fall. A customer facing a severe downturn has every incentive to test those terms in court.
The risk that remains is timing: delays in the ramp of new AI accelerators at major customers such as Nvidia could push hoped-for revenue into later quarters. At Micron’s most important manufacturing hub in Taiwan, tensions with the workforce threaten to disrupt operations. Reuters reported on September 15 that a union there warned of strike preparations unless management establishes a permanent profit-sharing system.
What Investors Should Watch
Fiscal Q1 guidance, issued on the same call, is historically the larger driver of the stock’s reaction. Key focus areas include fiscal 2027 first-quarter guidance, HBM4 customer qualification progress, and the sustainability of tight DRAM supply. Watch specifically for any update on how many additional SCAs management expects to announce, and whether the contracted revenue figure is revised above $100 billion.
Rosenblatt analyst Kevin Cassidy has flagged he expects to hear about additional customer agreements, rising prices, and stock buybacks. Any expansion of the contracted revenue base would be the clearest signal that Micron has structurally altered its earnings floor, not just ridden a cycle.
Bottom Line
The roughly $31.5 consensus and the 24% sequential jump are already in the price. The real question on Wednesday night is whether Sanjay Mehrotra raises the contracted revenue figure, lifts Q1 guidance above the $34 neighborhood analysts currently model, and confirms that the SCA framework is expanding rather than stalling. If those three things happen together, the argument that memory is now a contracted business, and deserves a contracted-business multiple, gets substantially harder to dismiss.
