Keithen Drury, The Motley Fool
2026 年 5 月 20 日 08:03（美國東部時間）

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Micron (NASDAQ: MU) is one of just a few makers of memory chips, which are utilized in nearly every computational device. This industry is notoriously cyclical, and there isn't much that sets one manufacturer's products apart from another. As a result, memory chips are basically a commodity, and the primary thing that moves their prices is the law of supply and demand. Right now, nearly all of the available supply -- including all the chips that will be made in the near future -- has been sold, and demand is at an all-time high. Micron told investors during its last conference call that it only has enough production capacity to meet half to two-thirds of medium-term demand. That's a major issue, and Micron's peers are experiencing similar conditions.

Micron is racing to get more production capacity available, and expects that its Idaho fabrication facility will be up and running by this time next year. It also has plans for more production facilities around the globe. Its peers are also building new fabs to take advantage of high demand, and that will help reduce the supply crunch, unless demand growth outpaces it. That's a real possibility, at least for a while: Micron predicts that the total addressable market for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) will rise from $35 billion in 2025 to $100 billion by 2028. So, even if production triples from now until 2028, there still could be a shortage of chips. As long as demand for memory chips is elevated beyond what manufacturers can produce, Micron will have pricing power, and the stock will benefit.

However, this level of memory demand won't last forever, and with all the players making efforts to increase supply, the pendulum should eventually shift. It takes several years to bring a new memory chip foundry online, so there's always a big lag between when projects are started and when new supply arrives. Between that and the competitive nature of the space, prior build-outs have always overshot the mark, leading to an oversupply of memory relative to demand. So when this high-demand supercycle is over and additional supply meets easing demand, the price of memory chips could crater.

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