Micron Q4 FY2026 Earnings Preview: The $51 Billion Quarter Is Already in Wall Street's Estimates

Results update: Micron beat Q4 estimates and guided fiscal Q1 above the pre-earnings benchmark. [Read our post-earnings analysis](/articles/micron-q4-fy2026-results-fy2027-estimates).

Micron Technology reports fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, with its call at 2:30 p.m. Mountain time. As of September 27, consensus calls for revenue of $51.07 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $31.52, as shown in the Event Read on MU's catalysts page. Micron guided to $50.0 billion, plus or minus $1.0 billion, and $31.00, plus or minus $1.00, so revenue consensus is about $74 million above the top of the guided range and EPS consensus sits in its upper half.

Those expectations formed fast. Fiscal Q4 EPS consensus stood at $24.91 on June 25, the day after Micron's fiscal third-quarter report, and $31.01 by June 28. Since then it has risen 1.6%, and revenue consensus 1.5%. The adjustment to the fourth quarter happened in June. What September 30 can still change is fiscal 2027, where consensus EPS has more than tripled since February and analysts disagree widely.

Key figures

• ·Fiscal Q4 consensus: $51.07 billion revenue, $31.52 EPS, both at the top of Micron's guidance.
• ·The fiscal Q4 reset was complete by June 28, four days after the last report.
• ·Fiscal Q1 2027 consensus: $56.53 billion revenue, $35.00 EPS, about 11% above fiscal Q4.
• ·Fiscal 2027 consensus EPS: $158.42, up from $45.51 in February.
• ·GAAP gross margin: 84.6% in fiscal Q3, up from 37.7% a year earlier.
• ·Strategic Customer Agreements: about $100 billion of revenue at minimum prices.

1. The $51 billion quarter is already in the numbers

Micron also guided fiscal Q4 gross margin to approximately 86%.

Micron has beaten consensus revenue and EPS in each of the last six quarters.

Source: MU earnings history and surprises. Non-GAAP EPS as reported, against consensus before each report.

The setup this time is different. In earlier quarters, consensus sat below where results landed; now it already sits at the top of the range management gave in June.

2. Wall Street reset fiscal Q4 in four days, then stopped moving it

The chart at the top of this article traces the fiscal Q4 estimate day by day after the June report. Revenue consensus reached $50.04 billion within two days; EPS reached $31.01 by June 28.

The June 25 figures, from the day after the report, most likely still reflected estimates set before Micron issued its guidance. From late June to mid-September, the EPS estimate stayed between $31.14 and $31.33. Since September 18, revenue consensus has risen $0.62 billion and EPS consensus 36 cents: the bar has edged higher into the report, but only slightly.

3. Fiscal 2027 is where the larger reset happened

For the fiscal year that ends in August 2027, the change is of a different order. Fiscal 2027 consensus EPS stood at $45.51 on February 15, $105.77 on June 11 and $154.67 on August 16. On September 27 it stood at $158.42, up 248% since February and 49.8% above its June 11 level, before the report. Revenue consensus for the year rose from $96.07 billion to $253.15 billion.

Available observations show $105.77 on June 11 and $154.67 by August 16; they do not establish precisely when within that interval the change occurred, only that most of it was complete by mid-August. Since August 16, fiscal 2027 EPS consensus has risen 2.4%, most of that in the past two weeks. What stands out now is the spread around the average:

A useful yardstick is the fiscal Q4 consensus multiplied by four: $204.3 billion of revenue and $126.08 of EPS. The fiscal 2027 average implies roughly 24% more revenue and 26% more EPS than that run rate. The lowest EPS estimate is 4.6% above the annualized fiscal Q4 figure; the highest is 75% above it.

Even the lowest fiscal 2027 revenue estimate, $227.1 billion, implies average quarterly revenue of about $56.8 billion, 11% above the current fiscal Q4 consensus. The disagreement is over how much higher Micron goes from here.

The first step is already priced into the quarterly estimates. As of September 27, consensus for fiscal Q1 2027, the quarter ending in late November, calls for revenue of $56.53 billion and EPS of $35.00, both about 11% above the fiscal Q4 consensus. The range is narrower than for the full year: $54.0 billion to $60.1 billion of revenue and $32.44 to $38.05 of EPS, across about 20 analysts. That is the benchmark Micron's first fiscal 2027 guide will be measured against.

4. Gross margin is the earnings engine

Micron's GAAP gross margin rose from 37.7% in fiscal Q3 2025 to 84.6% in fiscal Q3 2026 (84.9% on a non-GAAP basis), and the company guided fiscal Q4 to about 86%. Pricing appears to have been the dominant contributor to the recent revenue and margin expansion, alongside product mix and cost. On the June call, Micron said fiscal Q3 DRAM bit shipments rose by a low-single-digit percentage while prices rose in the low 60s; NAND bits rose by a mid-single-digit percentage while prices rose in the mid 80s.

The effect on profit shows in MU's quarterly financial statements. Fiscal Q3 revenue rose $17.6 billion from the prior quarter and gross profit rose $17.3 billion, so about 98 cents of each additional dollar of revenue reached gross profit. Operating margin was 80.4%, and free cash flow, operating cash flow less capital expenditure, was $17.6 billion. SanDisk, the other large memory producer, reported a GAAP gross margin of 84.6% in its most recent quarter, which suggests the economics are industry-wide rather than specific to Micron. The two can be compared on MU vs SNDK.

Micron said its fiscal Q4 guidance reflects "meaningful moderation in the rate of price increases." At about 86%, gross margin has little room left to expand, so the next leg of earnings growth has to come mainly from revenue. That makes pricing and bit-supply commentary on September 30 more consequential than the margin figure itself.

5. The $100 billion contract question

The most distinctive part of Micron's June report was not a financial result. Management disclosed 16 Strategic Customer Agreements, or SCAs, generally five-year take-or-pay contracts running through the end of calendar 2030 (automotive agreements generally run three years). On the call, Micron said 14 of the 16 carry "a cumulative revenue at minimum price" of approximately $100 billion over their remaining term, and that remaining performance obligations for the SCAs signed so far, "including ones executed after the end of fiscal Q3," are approximately $100 billion.

The agreements cover roughly 20% of Micron's DRAM volume and a third of its NAND volume. Customers are providing about $22 billion of cash deposits and related financial commitments, including about $18 billion in cash deposits. Those deposits are security, not revenue: Micron said they are scheduled to be returned over time, weighted toward the second half of the agreements' terms. Management's goal is to have half or more of company revenue under SCAs. Our fiscal Q3 earnings insight covers the terms in more detail.

Three points help size the $100 billion:

• ·It is a floor, not a forecast. The figure uses minimum committed volumes at minimum prices. Spread over roughly four and a half remaining years, it averages a little over $20 billion a year, about a tenth of the annualized fiscal Q4 consensus. Actual revenue under the agreements should be far higher at current prices, but the headline measures downside protection.
• ·It is not in a filing yet. Micron's 10-Q for the quarter ended May 28 reported remaining performance obligations of approximately $5 billion, because most agreements were signed after the quarter closed. The fiscal 2026 annual report will be the first filing to show the full amount.
• ·The pricing works in both directions. The largest agreements have floors and ceilings, with ceilings for existing products set at calendar Q2 market prices. Micron said agreements with fixed prices, or ceilings at or near those levels, should account for about 40% of revenue once all planned SCAs are signed. The floor, management said, still supports a gross margin "well above our peak quarterly margins in any past cycle."

The open question is whether SCAs reduce the amplitude of Micron's traditional memory cycle, or mainly improve volume visibility while pricing stays cyclical. The answer probably depends on terms Micron has not disclosed: volumes by customer, where the floors sit, and how often prices are renegotiated inside the bands.

6. What could reverse the economics

The bear case does not require AI demand to disappear. It only requires supply and demand to become less imbalanced. The main risks are:

• ·Supply response. Micron raised fiscal 2026 capital expenditure to about $27 billion and said fiscal 2027 spending will rise substantially. SK Hynix and Samsung are also adding capacity. Micron expects its own greenfield fabs to contribute meaningfully to bit supply in calendar 2028.
• ·Price normalization. The fiscal Q4 guide already assumes slower price increases, and at an 86% gross margin, earnings are highly sensitive to any reversal.
• ·Inventory. Customers facing shortages can order ahead of need, which in past cycles was followed by periods of digestion.
• ·Capped upside. With about 40% of future revenue expected under fixed or capped pricing, Micron would not capture all of a further price rise.
• ·Start-up costs. Micron expects new fabs to add roughly $100 million to $200 million a quarter in costs during 2027.
• ·Concentrated demand. HBM demand depends on a small group of accelerator makers and hyperscale buyers, so a slowdown in AI infrastructure spending would reach Micron quickly.

Management's own view is the opposite. It said it expects tight conditions "to persist beyond calendar 2027," citing AI-driven demand and structural supply constraints. The consensus numbers above suggest analysts largely agree, which is why September 30 matters more for what it says about duration than for the quarter itself.

7. After a 279% gain, valuation becomes the paradox

Micron closed at $1,082.28 on September 25, up 279.2% in 2026 and 590.1% over the past year. Over the same year-to-date period, the SOXX semiconductor ETF gained 90.2%, Nvidia 20.7% and SanDisk 648.9%. The close was 13.8% below the stock's 52-week intraday high of $1,255.00, set on June 25, the day after the fiscal Q3 report.

That creates an unusual valuation setup. Micron's market capitalization is about $1.22 trillion and its trailing P/E, on GAAP earnings for the past four quarters, is 24.2x, as shown in MU at a Glance. On fiscal 2027 consensus EPS of $158.42, the stock trades at about 6.8x. Since the June high, the price has fallen while fiscal 2027 consensus has risen from $105.77 before the report to $158.42, so the forward multiple has compressed.

A low multiple on forward earnings is not automatically cheap. For cyclical companies, the lowest P/E often appears near peak earnings, because the market doubts that unusually high profits will last. Is 6.8x fiscal 2027 earnings evidence that Micron remains inexpensive, or evidence that investors do not believe current memory economics are sustainable? The gap between the two multiples shows how much earnings growth is embedded in the fiscal 2027 model, and how heavily the valuation depends on whether those earnings prove durable.

The stock's volatility reflects that uncertainty: beta is 2.22 and one-year realized volatility 80.7% (see MU's current stock metrics).

What to listen for on September 30

• ·Fiscal Q4 results vs. $51.07 billion revenue and $31.52 EPS. Because consensus already sits at the top of Micron's guidance range, a small beat matters less than what comes with it.
• ·Fiscal Q1 2027 guidance vs. $56.53 billion revenue and $35.00 EPS consensus. This is the cleanest test of whether the fiscal 2027 earnings trajectory embedded in current estimates is holding. A midpoint materially below those estimates would raise the bar for later fiscal 2027 quarters to support the current $253.2 billion full-year revenue consensus; a midpoint above them would strengthen the case that the annual estimate remains achievable.
• ·Gross margin guidance vs. about 86%. With little room left to expand, any step down would signal that price increases are slowing faster than volume is growing.
• ·Contract, HBM and supply commentary. Remaining performance obligations near $100 billion in the annual report would confirm the SCA floor; new agreements, HBM4 share, fiscal 2027 capital spending and new-fab start-up costs will shape how long current margins last.

This preview records what expectations looked like before the report. AlgovestIQ will cover the results and call in Earnings Insights; upcoming reports are tracked on the earnings calendar.

Methodology

Consensus estimates. AlgovestIQ uses dated analyst-consensus observations available through September 27, 2026. Estimate changes are calculated only from observed values; missing periods are not estimated.

Financial results. Reported quarterly financials and gross margins use Micron's filed GAAP results. Earnings-surprise comparisons use reported non-GAAP EPS against the consensus available before each earnings release.

Market data and valuation. Prices are as of the September 25, 2026 close. One-year realized volatility is calculated from daily closing prices. The fiscal 2027 P/E uses that close and the September 27 fiscal 2027 consensus EPS estimate.

Strategic Customer Agreements. Contract figures come from Micron's filings and earnings-call disclosures. Annualized figures are AlgovestIQ calculations for context, not company forecasts.

Limitations

Analyst estimates may change before Micron reports and can differ across consensus services. Fiscal 2027 low and high estimates represent individual analyst observations rather than confidence intervals. The SCA annualization in section 5 is illustrative; Micron has not stated that the approximately $100 billion contractual minimum will be recognized evenly over time. Historical relationships and current estimates do not guarantee future results.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.