Micron Technology delivered what the company's chief executive described as the most consequential single earnings night in its 47-year history, reporting fiscal third-quarter 2026 revenue of $41.46 billion — up 346% from $9.30 billion a year earlier and more than $5.6 billion above the Wall Street consensus of $35.85 billion. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $25.11, beating the $20.78 estimate by nearly 21%, while gross margins reached 84.9% on a non-GAAP basis, both all-time company records. Shares surged 17% on Thursday, the session following the report's release, before retreating 4.7% in Friday premarket trading as investors took profits amid a broader AI-sector selloff.
The scale of the results reflected a structural transformation in the memory industry driven by artificial intelligence. Data-center revenue exceeded $25 billion in the quarter alone, representing an annualized run rate above $100 billion, while enterprise SSD revenue surpassed $5 billion, more than doubling sequentially. The company said its HBM products remain fully sold out and that supply-demand tightness is expected to persist well beyond calendar year 2027, providing a degree of revenue visibility that is historically rare in memory markets. Operating cash flow reached $25.4 billion for the quarter, and adjusted free cash flow came in at $18.3 billion.
The structural signal embedded in the earnings was the announcement of 16 multi-year Strategic Customer Agreements, or SCAs — take-or-pay contracts that collectively lock in a minimum of approximately $100 billion in contracted revenue. The agreements included $22 billion in upfront customer cash, a provision that Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said would fundamentally transform the company's financial model by eliminating the cyclical volatility that has historically characterized memory chip economics. Full-year capital expenditure guidance of approximately $27 billion reflects the company's confidence in the durability of demand.
Fourth-quarter guidance called for revenue of $50 billion, plus or minus $1 billion — a figure that came in roughly $6.4 billion above the $43.58 billion analyst forecast and implied sequential revenue growth of 21% from the already-record third quarter. Gross margin is expected near 86%, up from 84.9% in the prior quarter. Free cash flow is expected to increase substantially again, with management noting that the second and third quarters combined have already generated more cumulative cash flow than the company produced in all prior quarters of its existence.
The earnings rippled broadly across the semiconductor sector on Thursday. Sandisk rose 22%, Applied Materials jumped 13.4%, and Western Digital gained 4.9% as investors extrapolated Micron's pricing environment and demand visibility to related players in the memory supply chain. Qualcomm also benefited from the broader AI infrastructure enthusiasm, rising 9% after separately announcing it had nearly doubled its projection for non-handset revenue by 2029 to $40 billion. These gains partially offset Thursday's sharp declines in megacap technology names including Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft.
Friday's premarket pullback in Micron of 4.7% reflects a combination of factors beyond simple profit-taking. The broader tech-sector selloff triggered by the OpenAI IPO delay report has introduced a renewed risk-off tone that is weighing even on fundamentally strong performers. At the same time, the stock's 17% single-session gain had already priced in much of the beat, raising the bar for incremental positive surprises. The company's next major catalyst will be the fiscal fourth-quarter report, expected in late September, where investors will scrutinize whether the $50 billion revenue target holds in the face of any macro or geopolitical disruption.