From the bottom of Rolfe Winkler’s report for The Wall Street Journal Thursday, on Apple’s unprecedented price increases (gift link):
Apple’s price hikes arrived the day after Micron Technology, the
big American maker of memory and storage, reported blowout
quarterly earnings, touting gross profit margins that topped 80%.
Shares jumped 16% after the close and appeared likely to power a
Thursday rally among semiconductor stocks. […]In an interview Wednesday night, Micron Chief Business Officer
Sumit Sadana said the company couldn’t make investments during the
memory market’s last downturn, when Micron’s gross profits went
negative, in part because certain customers took advantage to pay
rock-bottom prices.“We told a couple of the customers who were being very aggressive
with pricing at that time that this is not constructive,” he said,
without naming Apple, adding that low prices discouraged capital
investments. “A lot of the industry investments got shut down in
2023 because of really poor pricing and really poor margins.”
I overlooked this segment when I read (and linked to) Winkler’s report Thursday. It really does seem clear that Sadana is blaming Apple for not cutting Micron any slack when the supply/demand curve for RAM had a different look in 2023. I’m sure Micron’s current 80 percent margins are here to stay this time, so getting a few jabs in at Apple will never come back to bite Micron and Sadana.
