A Year Ago, Citi Said Buy Micron. It’s Up More Than 500%. Here’s Where We See the Stock Going.
Citi saw something in Micron that nobody else did, and the stock left even that bold call in the dust. Now, after a sharp pullback, the next move may matter more than anything that came before it.
On September 11, 2025, Citi raised its price target on Micron (NASDAQ:MU | MU Price Prediction) to $175 from $150 and kept its Buy rating. The stock had closed at $139.75 the day before. Citi expected memory prices to rise and wanted investors in position before the next earnings report.
Through Friday’s close, Micron is up 568.53% since then. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) gained 17.96% in that period.
The call was bullish and beat the market clearly, yet the stock still left it far behind. Now Micron has pulled back sharply, which makes the next move more important than the record.
Citi’s Case: Memory Pricing Would Outrun Consensus
The note came ahead of Micron’s fiscal fourth-quarter report on September 23, 2025. Citi expected an in-line quarter. The real call was on guidance: Citi thought Micron would guide well above consensus as DRAM and NAND pricing rose. Its raised fiscal 2026 earnings estimate sat 26% above consensus, based on better-than-expected memory demand.
Citi was the only firm to make that call that day.
What Happened Next: Citi’s $175 Target Was Gone Within Weeks
The earnings report on September 23 decided it. Micron posted fiscal fourth-quarter EPS of $3.03, beating the $2.69 estimate, and revenue also came in above estimates. The next day, Citi raised its target to $200, and many other firms raised theirs too.
Then memory prices took off. In December 2025, quarterly revenue reached $13.64 billion, up 56.6% from a year earlier. The stock was at $243.53 when that report came out, well past Citi’s target. In March 2026, revenue rose 196.3% to $23.86 billion, and GAAP gross margin jumped to 74.4% from 36.8%. On March 19, 2026, Citi raised its target to $510. JPMorgan, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, BofA and Morgan Stanley raised theirs the same day.
The June report was even larger. Revenue hit $41.46 billion, gross margin reached 84.6%, HBM4 entered high-volume shipments, and Micron announced multi-year Strategic Customer Agreements. The next day, Micron hit its high since the call of $1,254.61, and Barclays raised its target to $2,000.
The September 2026 report brought non-GAAP gross margin of 87.0% and full fiscal-year non-GAAP EPS of $75.52. Management guided first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue to $61.5 billion.
Citi kept adjusting its target to keep up with its own call. It cut to $1,150 from $1,400 on August 7, 2026, then went back up to $1,300. DA Davidson went to $3,000. Goldman Sachs stayed at Neutral the whole way, most recently with a $1,100 target.
Verdict: Too Cautious. Citi read the memory cycle correctly and was right about the guidance. Its target captured only a small part of the move that followed.
Where We See Micron Going
Micron trades at $881.65 after falling 5.63% in Friday’s session. Chip stocks sold off after Intel’s earnings and weak PC forecast, and Barron’s flagged that surging memory prices carry downsides too. The stock is now 29.73% below its June high.
The valuation tells a different story from the chart. At today’s price, Micron trades near 12x trailing non-GAAP earnings and about 6x its annualized first-quarter EPS guidance of $38.15. Management says more than 75% of fiscal 2027 shipments are already committed, and “we really don’t have line of sight to when supply and demand balance.”
Our one-year base-case target is $995.75, which means about 12.94% upside from here.
- Bull case, $1,348.70: Memory pricing remains strong, data center demand holds, and Micron keeps beating its own guidance. That would be about a 52.97% gain.
- Downside case, $748.96: Memory pricing rolls over, demand cools, and the chip selloff deepens. That would be about a 15.05% decline.
Valuation and committed shipments favor the upside. Our outlook on Micron stays positive, even after this run. The main risk is pricing. Micron’s margins depend on prices staying high, and new supply will start arriving once Idaho produces its first wafers in mid-calendar 2027. If AI demand slows before that supply comes online, the bear case comes into play quickly.
The Street is far more bullish than we are. The average target is $1,561.91, with 9 Strong Buy, 36 Buy, 3 Hold, 0 Sell, plus 1 Strong Sell ratings. Our target sits below that average.
The lesson from Citi’s call is about where to look. The 26% gap between Citi’s earnings estimate and consensus mattered more than its $175 price target. When an analyst’s estimate is far above everyone else’s, that gap says more about the stock’s potential than the target does (we reverse-engineered what the larger tech winners looked like early in a free playbook here).
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.