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Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Here's what drove Micron's major Q3 revenue beat
Micron's (MU) third quarter earnings results beat estimates; in particular, its data center sales surged on artificial intelligence (AI) demand. Cory Johnson, Epistrophy Capital Research chief market strategist and host of "The Drill Down" podcast, joins Market Domination Overtime to explain what's driving Micron's growth. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here. Let's get some more reaction to Micron earnings. Joining us now is Corey Johnson, chief market strategist at Epistrophe Capital Research and host of the Drill Down podcast. Corey, Micron reports, at least initially, investors like what they see. The stock is surging in the after-hours. But give me your your initial take, Corey, on on the report. I have to tell you when I was looking at my model over the weekend, I thought, I must be insane to be looking over nine billion in revenue. What am I doing wrong here? And I look, and they put up this print of over $9 billion in revenue, $9.3 billion in revenue. And it was driven by the things that I I wrote about in my previous note, Joshua sent you as well, which is talking about high bandwidth memory, talking about sales into the data center. We knew that they were sold out going into the quarter. But the nature of the way they were sold out and what they were selling was so interesting. This high bandwidth memory, it is not only different than DRAM of old, uh right now, you know, so if you want to think about it in a very basic way, it's like stacking up pancakes of memory, all working on top of each other, and then then stacked up really close to the GPU. Used to be memory was sort of more dispersed on a circuit board. And it allows a GPU in a data center to access a lot more memory at any given moment, and it allows the work of both inference and training and inference to happen uh in the data center of an AI model. And they're selling this stuff like pancakes, like hotcakes, right? I don't really know what a hotcake is. Joshua might. But I um they're selling these things like crazy, and they're selling them out, and they're selling them at better and better margins. And and it's a really impressive product. What's curious, and I'll be listening in the conference call to hear, are any hints that they might have a lasting advantage here? So, traditionally, what we've seen from Micron is selling kind of the same product as their two big competitors in Hynix and Samsung. But with high bandwidth memory, and to be clear, uh they weren't the first ones out there with high bandwidth memory, but they seem to be leading and growing market share. And the question here is, are there process advantages that they have that can last for a while to help them grow even faster than the market, and indeed, some IP advantages? That's what we're listening for. And and Corey and and Josh, I just want to mention some other numbers are in the press release around what Corey is talking about here. So, the company said it saw an all-time high in DRAM revenue. That's dynamic random access memory. That includes the high bandwidth memory sub category that we're talking about, which saw 50% sequential growth, data center revenue more than doubling, which and with that a quarterly record. But I think, Corey, to your point, the real question here is whether what was this fundamentally commoditized business that was very cyclical, whether it has changed over the long term, whether it's sort of muted but still in effect, right? You know, how how much has this sort of changed the calculus? We saw how much it changed the calculus for Nvidia. I mean, most semiconductor companies were sort of cyclical and commoditized. Um and and we're seeing that become less so. So, I guess we just have to figure out if if Micron's going to fall into that category. And also what they can charge for it, right? Can they charge their customers so much more because they are sold out? Are they looking at the long term? I mean Micron has never gone below above 60% margins. I think their all-time record is something like 59.5, 59.4 or something. Uh and indeed, in my modeling of this company, I'm trying to figure out, can they get to a higher number here? Do they, knowing the cyclicality of semiconductors, and no one knows that more than Micron, can they, in fact, start to take more profit from their customers, or do they risk the chance of pissing off their customers and not wanting to make that that decision? Now, Nvidia has decided to take margins of better than 70% in a business that was once barely profitable. Let's see if Micron next who decides to do that, and again, what we hear in the conference call, but this is such an exciting time to cover enterprise technology, and the fact that Micron, which used to make just boring DRAM in the heart of Idaho, is is now um making such an interesting product and such a technologically advanced product in high bandwidth memory, it just shows what an exciting time um uh AI has given us uh in this in this moment in enterprise tech.
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Here's what drove Micron's major Q3 revenue beat
Micron's (MU) third quarter earnings results beat estimates; in particular, its data center sales surged on artificial intelligence (AI) demand. Cory Johnson, Epistrophy Capital Research chief market strategist and host of "The Drill Down" podcast, joins Market Domination Overtime to explain what's driving Micron's growth. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The problem with Trump's call for Apple to make iPhones in the US
President Trump says Apple (AAPL), along with other smartphone makers like Samsung ( will have to pay a 25% tariff for every iPhone sold in the US that wasn't made domestically. Epistrophy Capital Research chief market strategist and host of "The Drill Down" podcast, Cory Johnson, joins Market Domination to discuss the dynamics that prevent Apple from making iPhones in the US. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's tariff policy could be economic misconduct. Here's why.
Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Rick Newman joins Market Domination Overtime with Yahoo Finance Head of News Myles Udland, RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas, and Epistrophy Capital Research chief market strategist and host of "The Drill Down" podcast Cory Johnson to make the case that Trump's tariffs constitute malpractice in the president's own metaphor that the US economy is the patient. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination Overtime here. Right, if a surgeon operates needlessly on a patient, it's medical malpractice. So if a policy maker destroys value, endangers livelihoods and lowers living standards is that economic malpractice? Joining us now to make the case is Yahoo finances, Rick Newman, Rick. It's economic malpractice on an unprecedented scale. Would like to say hello to Joe Barcelos there. How are you doing, man? Hey Rick, good to see you. This is this, so what President Trump said yesterday using this medical metaphor is one of the most idiotic and regrettable things that any president will ever say in American history. Just to remind people who might have missed it. Trump said referring to his tariffs, "The operation is over, the patient lived and is healing. The patient will be far stronger, better and more resilient than ever before." This is complete nonsense. So just to break this down, number one Trump says, the patient, the US economy was sick and in need of surgery. That is false. The US economy was doing well before Trump took office. Now it now it actually is sick because of Trump and the patient is not doing well. The patient is hemorrhaging. That is what is happening in markets and markets are only foretelling what is going to happen in the real economy. There is only one person in the world who doesn't realize what a disaster this is and that is Donald Trump. There might be a second person I, you could finger which is Peter Navarro, his trade advisor, and as you guys were discussing before, who might be the fall guy for this? If there's anybody I think it might be Peter Navarro uh who already went to prison once on Donald Trump's behalf and might uh take the pain again. We can only hope that that is what Trump does, that he finds a scapegoat and says this was all somebody else's idea. I'm calling the whole thing off because if he doesn't, as Joe and basically every other economist in the world knows, this is a nightmare. Rick uh you uh made the case of what the president, how the president has messed up, but he has made the case that we've been being ripped off by the terrorist. Other countries have been charging us uh and uh I don't know if you've made the case that every country out there that we are now charging terrorists too that the American consumers will be paying for, have been ripping us off. But isn't it the case that some countries have been ripping us off? I don't think so. Um I think some countries have been cheating on trade. I mean I think there are are a lot of people who would say yes, China cheats on trade uh it uses a government run economy to subsidize the big uh state-owned enterprises and other things like that. Yes, we we do have a problem with people and communities that used to rely on uh good paying manufacturing jobs that aren't there. But blowing up the whole economy is not the solution. Uh you know, to go back to the to the medical metaphor. Uh you don't, you don't operate on the entire body from head to toe to put, fix a pimple or something. I mean, address the problem in a targeted way and there are tons of ideas for how to address these problems in targeted ways. There are ways to crack down on Chinese cheating, other countries do it as well, um it's too too complicated to get into in one segment but to do you know there are many ways you can do that. Uh the places that we need better paying jobs for people in America who do not have college educations, there are also many ways to address that problem. We need more trades people. That is not assembly line workers making socks that we don't want to pay for in America. It is people, it's plumbers and welders that we need to do jobs that are good paying jobs. Many companies need skilled workers that they can't get enough of and they're trying to line up with local government and state governments and say here are the types of workers we need, can we get these people in the in the in the pipeline to get these skills? All these types of things. Do that kind of stuff. Why make everybody 25 or 30% poorer in order to bring back to bring back 100,000 auto maker jobs? This is this is insane. All right, so the late great Herb Stein used to tell us that if something bad goes on long enough, it usually comes to an end. How do we get out of this, Rick? What's what's what's the way forward? Well Joe, I mean you would be the one who could put numbers on this. Um if Trump were to reverse this quickly, we could get out of it without too much damage, but the longer this, these, these tariffs stay in effect, um the more this damage becomes irreversible. I mean you know to go back to the metaphor. Trump is not going to kill the patient, he can't kill the whole US economy. Um thank god. I mean the US economy will survive all of this in some form. Uh but we're going to survive with less. Well, I mean this is demand destruction and value destruction. You you don't just automatically get it back if it stays in place long enough. So um I don't know. I mean this this is a real test of um how responsive the political system actually can be when you when you have a man-made crisis on your hands, and much of this is unprecedented. I mean, Trump has figured out that um he has he doesn't have to answer to anybody on tariffs. He he he doesn't, he knows that he doesn't have to run for re-election unless he tries to, so he doesn't have to answer to voters in that way. So um we are in a predicament here uh and this all comes down to how hard headed is Trump actually going to be. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Homebuilder stocks gain as housing market braces for tariffs
Homebuilder stocks, including D.R. Horton (DHI), Lennar (LEN), PulteGroup (PHM), KB Home (KBH), and Toll Brothers (TOL), rise as the housing market prepares for the impact of Trump's new tariffs. National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) CEO Jim Tobin joins Market Domination with Yahoo Finance Head of News Myles Udland, RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas, and Epistrophy Capital Research chief market strategist and host of "The Drill Down" podcast Cory Johnson to discuss the current state of the homebuilding market. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here. housing got a bit of a reprieve from Trump's sweeping new tariff agenda. Looking here at some of the best performers that we can find in the market today. DR Horton, Lennar, those stocks up among others. Several key building materials are exempt from facing further tariffs at this point in time. But markets under pressure, worries about the global economy. How's the housing outlook shaping up as we move into the teeth of the spring selling season? Joining us now to discuss is Jim Tobin, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders. So Jim, let's just start with what you and your members have been talking about through the, you know, kind of the whole tariff discussion, where we're at, rates, the whole situation on how you stand as we enter, I guess a grand new era for US trade policy. Yeah, a lot of uncertainty in trade policy. You know, in 2023, we used over $200 billion in building materials in this country and about 7% of that came from over our own borders. So trade policy is critically important. China, Canada, Mexico, in that order, are our largest building material trade partners, plus a lot of materials come from many other countries. So we are watching the tariff situation very carefully and working with the White House, talking to the White House about the uncertainty that we've created, not only in the macro economy, but also in the building material sector, which is critically important to building affordable housing in this country. All right. So I think that we're short about 3 million homes relative to demand and demographic change in the United States economy right now. Give me your quick elevator pitch on how we would fix that. Bill baby bill. It's pretty simple. The only way we are going to create a more housing affordability in this country is to build more housing. We've underbuilt since the Great Recession. This year, we're going to underbuild again. We're predicting about 1 million single family units this year, two to 300 multi-family units this year. We need to build about 1.5 to 1.6 million units, that's both single and multi-family, not only to meet household formation, immigration, and replacing older housing stock, the traditional drivers of building demand in this country. But then we've got to talk about that backlog that you cited. And the only way to do that is to get up to that trend line of one and a half to 1.6 million units. That's the only way we're going to do that. We need all levels of government to jump on board. We need to make sure that we can keep building material prices low. We need to extend the Trump tax cuts and we need a deregulatory environment that is really going to help reduce the regulatory burden on home creation in this country. So many questions. How about a science question? Want to talk about lumber. I think that there's a misunderstanding that we can replace Canadian lumber with trees and lumber that comes from the US. Can you talk to us about why Canadian lumber is particularly necessary for home construction in the US and why it's different than US lumber? We don't produce enough lumber in the United States to meet demand. We get about 30% of our lumber supply from over our shores and the bulk of it, about 70% of that 30%, comes from Canada. The species of wood that comes from Canada, specifically from their Northwest provinces, that is a preferred building material for studs and framing. That is, it is different than southern yellow pine, which is the predominant southeastern species of pine trees that we use. Now, we also have that particular Canadian species of lumber in our Pacific Northwest, but since the late 1990s, we have no longer cut and harvested timber off our national forests. In fact, in the late 1990s, we were pulling about 12 to 14 billion board feet off our national forests. Since then, we've treated our national forests like national parks. We've really slowed down timber production of our own domestic renewable resource on our forest service lands. Last year, we cut about two billion board feet. Guess where that delta of 10 billion board feet now comes from? Primarily Canada. So, while there is a preference for Canadian lumber, it's really a supply and demand issue. Until we cut enough and mill enough in the United States, we have to look over our own borders to meet demand for lumber in this country. And, you know, Jim, last question for you. I want to talk about the immigration situation and the labor constraints that we've also seen in the housing market over the last, you know, years now. But sort of, what's that dynamic been like this year with some of the administration's new policies? And how your members are thinking about that constraint as well, with this potential, you know, with this built-in demand backlog as Joe was talking about. Yeah, the construction industry continues to have a persistent labor shortage, about 200 to 300,000 jobs every month for the better part of a decade. We're just not bringing the next generation of men and women to work in the trades and train them in this country, whether it's starting in grammar school and high school, and moving through the trade schools after high school. So again, we've got to look at immigrant labor. About a third of the trades is immigrant labor right now. So when you talk about an immigration policy that is very constrictive, it is going to hurt our industry particularly hard. So we are watching that very closely as well. Of course, we believe in securing our borders and providing a pathway for people to come into this country to work in the construction industry. But right now, there is a lot of confusion in not only enforcement policy, but how are we going to bring people in? And that's only going to add to the cost of housing right now as well. All right, Jim Tobin, CEO of the NAHB. Thanks for the time. Sign in to access your portfolio
