Michael Burry
Author of Cassandra Unchained, Former Hedge Fund Manager at Scion Asset Management
Micron looks expensive on price-to-book at about 8x versus a historical average of about 2x, and relying on forward P/E for such a cyclical business can be dangerous. x.com
Micron Technology looks expensive on cyclical-earnings rules. Benjamin Graham warned that cyclical companies look cheapest at the peak of the cycle, when earnings are highest, and advised paying no more than 15 times the average earnings of the last three years. Setting forward earnings aside, Micron's average P/E over the last three years is 37.25. x.com
Micron's revenue grew faster than its stock over the past year, leaving it cheaper on trailing earnings. Quarterly revenue rose from $11.3B to $54.2B, while the stock rose from about $198 to $878 and trailing P/E fell from roughly 24x to 11.6x. x.com
If Micron has only two years of decent forecasts, its limited visibility warrants a lower multiple, not a higher one. x.com
Micron is too risky to own long term because memory is one of the most cyclical parts of the AI trade. Its margins are hard to forecast, so memory, like neoclouds, deserves a low multiple until it proves it can run a sustainable business through cycles, despite immense upside. Micron belongs in the too-hard pile: worth swing trading at opportune times, not holding long term or in real size. x.com x.com
Micron looks very cheap because the market underestimates how sustainable its earnings will be over the next few years. x.com
Micron sits firmly in the too-hard pile because there is no clear view of what its earnings will look like three to five years from now. Memory stocks are simply not a fit here, with no criticism of memory investors. x.com
Micron's record run looks like the top of a cycle, with retail chasing narrative rather than inputs. It doubled from $500B to $1T in 48 trading days, the fastest ever, after an 850% gain in 12 months and a UBS target hike from $535 to $1,625. JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon named Micron as a sign of market exuberance, also flagging record-low credit spreads and possible 4% inflation. Earnings are growing, with a 0.07 PEG ratio, but stocks that double this fast get repriced violently when rotation comes. … Show more
Micron is the most mispriced growth story in semiconductors, with a PEG ratio of about 0.4x, the lowest among chip stocks. ON Semiconductor sits at about 0.5x, Marvell and AMD at 0.7x and Nvidia at about 1.0x, which the market prices as fairly valued, while ASML, Lam Research and KLA are getting expensive at 1.7-2.0x. x.com
Micron faces a severe crash risk from CXMT's current threat and apparent investor complacency after a euphoric high. If the Wall St Cheat Sheet fits, most of Micron's gains across 40 years, amassed in just one year, could be erased soon. Earlier, Elon Musk said Micron had been reasonable on future memory prices; memory stocks were not yet to be faded. x.com x.com