Micron quadruples year-to-date. Wall Street mostly thinks Wednesday's earnings will live up to the hype

Shares of chipmaker Micron hit a new all-time high on Monday, and are up more than 300% since the beginning of the year due to a global supply shortage of memory chips. Despite concerns that chip stocks could be topping out as the industry hustles to boost supply, Wall Street thinks Micron still has plenty of room to run. Wednesday's earnings are expected to show quarterly earnings-per-share of $20.42, according to a FactSet consensus analyst estimate, but investors see those numbers coming in higher. The Bank of America trading desk is reporting a buyside whisper number for third-quarter EPS of $22.17. That's based on an informal poll of buyers conducted over the past week. The reason for the upside is that artificial intelligence "inference" – or query response – is already being mentioned by Micron as a driver of demand for their chips. This is a trend that's expected to continue. "[Micron] has been citing strength in 'inference' and agentic adoption. While hyperscalers and other semis have of course discussed agentic, the idea of agentic AI is being cited [as] a meaningful demand driver already, not out there in the future," Bank of America traders wrote in a June 22 commentary. MU YTD mountain Micron, YTD Other Wall Street banks are feeling similarly bullish on Micron stock, pushing price targets above the FactSet consensus of $1,092. Needham analyst N. Quinn Bolton raised the bank's 12-month price target for the stock to $1,550 from $500 on Monday. …