micron mu memory commodity oligopoly ai memory

Memory still trades like a commodity at the top of a cycle.
Micron MU has run close to 700 percent in a year, yet the forward multiple has compressed to roughly 8x, around 80 percent below the semiconductor industry median near 37x. The more the earnings power compounds, the cheaper the market insists on pricing the name.
The demand behind those earnings is not inventory restocking. HBM capacity is sold out through 2026 with price and volume locked under long term agreements, three suppliers control over 95 percent of global DRAM, and meaningful capacity expansion is unlikely until late 2027 or 2028. That is not a commodity. That is an oligopoly selling an input with no substitute into the largest capex wave in technology history.
An 8x multiple says the market is still underwriting the 2018 glut. The cyclical reputation is exactly why the market refuses to grant a full valuation, but the mix shift into high margin AI memory is structural, not a spot spike that mean reverts. Price the durability of contracted earnings rather than the reflex of past cycles and the stock is not expensive, it is mispriced.
The cycle has been rewritten for MU SNDK $EWY $DRAM