Key Points
Edgewater Research warned that prices and demand for computer memory chips would fall in the second half of 2025.
Micron stock has decent earnings, but its free cash flow already looks weak.
And now that free-cash-flow number could get even worse.
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Shares of computer semiconductor memory maker Micron (NASDAQ: MU) tumbled 4.3% through 11:45 a.m. ET Monday.
You can probably blame Edgewater Research for that.
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On the edge of being informative
There’s not a lot of detail available yet on what Edgewater said about Micron today. So far, the most I’ve found is the briefest of mentions, on StreetInsider.com, that the research firm says demand and pricing for computer memory in the first half of 2025 appear to have been “better.” (Better than last year? Better than expected? Your guess is as good as mine.)
And that both demand and pricing will be “sub seasonal,” or worse than the company’s historical average for the second half of a year, and with “bias lower.” Which would appear to mean that things will be somewhat bad, and potentially worse than investors are expecting.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that Edgewater says this is true for both Micron and its rival SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK).
Is Micron stock a sell?
Admittedly, this isn’t a whole lot of detail, nor does it give investors a whole lot of explanation for why they might to want to sell Micron — or SanDisk, whose stock is down 8.6%. So how worried should you be?
In the case of Micron, I’d be pretty worried. Although reported earnings of $6.2 billion (according to generally accepted accounting principles) look fine to me, the company generated less than $1.9 billion in real free cash flow over the last 12 reported months. On a $139 billion market cap, that works out to a very expensive price-to-free cash flow ratio of 74 — which is probably too much to pay.
And the greater the “bias lower” in H2 2025, the less inclined I’d be to buy Micron stock.
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Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
