5 Things Micron Technology's Management Wants You to Know

Memory chip giant Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) reported first-quarter results Tuesday night, and it was a doozy. Micron smashed analyst targets across the board, and share prices jumped as much as 6.4% higher on Wednesday.

Revenues rose 71% year over year, landing at $6.8 billion; the analyst consensus only called for $6.4 billion. On the bottom line, adjusted earnings rose more than sixfold to $2.45 per diluted share. Here, your average analyst would have settled for $2.19 per share. Looking ahead, Micron's management also issued second-quarter guidance targets far ahead of current analyst views.

That's Micron's first quarter of fiscal year 2018 by the numbers. To get a deeper understanding of how the business is developing, let's take a dive into management's earnings call with analysts.

1. Street prices

Average selling prices for Micron's memory chips are obviously of critical importance to the company's business. In the past, boom times have always been followed by brutal price wars. Micron's revenues, profits, and share prices followed suit by crashing in lockstep with the market conditions.

But the industry has been reshaped by consolidation and a newfound fiscal discipline among the three largest memory-chip makers, one of which is Micron. Things actually look different this time. Chip prices are declining again after several quarters of stability, but that's a slow fall, while production costs are dropping much faster:

In this pricing environment, Maddock sees "reasonable room for gross margin expansion."

2. Supply and demand

Here's what the supply-and-demand equation looks like at the moment. In short, demand for DRAM chips is healthy and surging, while order volumes for NAND flash memory are skyrocketing:

3. Diversification

In this healthy market environment, Micron has the rare luxury of picking its battles. The company is shifting its production lines to make higher volumes of very profitable product lines while limiting the supply of lower-value commodity chips. That includes a generous dose of fresh innovation:

4. Seasonality

As an interesting side effect of the shifting market winds, seasonal sales patterns are fading away:

5. What's next

Micron's CEO closed his prepared remarks on this optimistic note:

10 stocks we like better than Micron TechnologyWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*

David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Micron Technology wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.

Click here to learn about these picks!

*Stock Advisor returns as of December 4, 2017

Anders Bylund owns shares of Micron Technology. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.