Susquehanna Lifts Micron Target to $525 on Accelerating DRAM Pricing

The Upgrade

Susquehanna analyst Mehdi Hosseini delivered the headline move, raising his Micron price target from $345 to $525 — a 52% increase and the most aggressive call on the Street. Hosseini cited DRAM and NAND average selling prices "tracking meaningfully above our January expectations," with the trend expected to continue into the second quarter of 2026.

Separately, Citi's Atif Malik raised his target from $385 to $430, noting that supply chain analysis points to the majority of 2026 hyperscale capex revisions being driven by higher memory costs. Between the two calls, the message is clear: memory pricing power is real, and it's accelerating.

Memory Pricing Inflection

The numbers behind the upgrades are striking. Citi projects DRAM average selling prices to climb 171% year-over-year in 2026, driven by data center demand. NAND is similarly strong, with prices projected to advance 127% year-over-year on solid enterprise SSD momentum. Samsung is reportedly raising DRAM pricing 100% quarter-over-quarter in Q1, confirming the trend is industry-wide.

Micron's 256GB SOCAMM2 LPDDR5X module — the industry's first at that capacity — started shipping customer samples on March 3 in collaboration with Nvidia. The module enables 2TB of LPDDR memory per CPU and reduces time-to-first-token for LLM inference by more than 2.3x. It's a product cycle that feeds directly into the pricing trend: AI infrastructure is consuming memory at a pace that suppliers can barely match.

The Vera Rubin Question

Not everything is clean. Korean media reported that Nvidia's Vera Rubin AI system will source HBM4 chips exclusively from Samsung and SK Hynix, leaving Micron out of the premium tier. Micron is positioned to supply HBM4 for Rubin CPX — the mid-range inference chips — but the top-shelf allocation went elsewhere.

Analysts are largely shrugging it off. Radio Free Mobile's Richard Windsor expects Micron to be "brought on board later in the year" as shipments ramp, noting that industry capacity is committed through 2026 regardless. Micron's CFO Mark Murphy has said the company secured price and volume commitments for all 2026 HBM production and began HBM4 shipments a quarter ahead of schedule. The risk is real but contained — unless Samsung and SK Hynix lock in exclusive access long-term, which could compress Micron's margins on next-gen products.

Earnings Setup

Fiscal Q2 results land on March 18, and the bar is high. The Street expects revenue of approximately $18.7 billion at 68% gross margins, with EPS projected around $8.42. Polymarket puts the probability of a beat at 91%.

Micron historically peaks 2-4 months before DRAM prices peak, and the stock sits about 15% below its February 2 all-time high of $437.80. Susquehanna's Hosseini sees supply and demand balancing around mid-2027 as new fabs come online, which gives the pricing cycle roughly a year of runway. Insider selling — over 100,000 shares from senior executives in the past three months — is the main cautionary signal, but it hasn't deterred the upgrade cycle.

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