Micron Technology hit a $1 trillion market capitalization for the first time Tuesday. The memory-chip company was being buoyed by a broad semiconductor rally, with extra lift from President Donald Trump and Wall Street.
Micron shares were up 18.48% at $889.78. The stock reached as high as $891.27 in Tuesday trading. To finish with a market valuation of $1 trillion or more would require a closing price of at least $886.74.
The stock was the best performer in the S&P 500 Tuesday. It has risen 70% in May, which would represent its best month since 1987, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
The move was more pronounced than other chip stocks, which could be due to presidential approval.
“Micron, boy Micron’s great, they’re investing hundreds of billions,” Trump said in a rally in Suffern, New York on Friday.
Micron has said it would invest up to $100 billion over 20 years to build the largest semiconductor factory in the U.S., located in Clay, N.Y., north of Syracuse. It broke ground on the project earlier this year and is expected to start production in 2030.
Overall, Micron has laid out a $200 billion investment plan to expand memory manufacturing and research-and-development in the U.S. as it races against South Korean rivals SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics to capture more of the booming demand for its hardware.
SK Hynix rose 5.7% and Samsung gained 2.2% in local trading on Tuesday. Samsung management and its union leaders reached a tentative bonus-pay agreement last week, averting a strike at the world’s largest memory-chip maker, although it is subject to a worker vote.
Micron stock is up 163% this year and is 704% higher over the past 12 months, as of Friday’s close.
However, Wall Street thinks further gains lie ahead. UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri raised his target price on the stock to $1,625 from $535, reiterating a Buy rating. The target is based on a price-to-earnings ratio of 15 times Arcuri’s forecast for Micron’s 2029 earnings.
Micron trades at a notably low forward price-to-earnings ratio—8.4 times, according to FactSet—because the memory-chip industry goes through cycles of boom and bust.
“We believe the market will start to put a more ‘normal’ multiple on the stock…as more details emerge about the structural changes AI has driven to the entire memory complex,” Arcuri wrote.
Arcuri pointed to the increasing use of long-term supply agreements, suggesting that up to 30% of double-data rate memory hardware—used in a variety of modern devices—will be soon locked in at pricing slightly below current levels.
“Importantly, we anchor on C2029E EPS [2029 earnings per share] as we believe it best reflects Micron’s through-cycle earnings power under long-term agreements because, by that point, our model assumes a moderate memory downcycle,” Arcuri wrote.