Long live the revolution!

If there were any doubts as to whether memory will remain dear for the foreseeable future as the world’s largest technology companies compete for scarce chips, Micron dispensed with them on Wednesday evening in the US.

The company — which, along with Samsung and SK Hynix, has a stranglehold on the market for one of the AI revolution’s most important components — said sales will be around $62 billion in the current quarter, $5 billion more than consensus expected.

The upbeat guide was accompanied by an easy beat on the top-line for last quarter, during which sales rose — checks notes — 362% YoY, to $52.23 billion. The outlook suggests that pace will slow only slightly, to around 351%, in the three months ending in November.

Prices for the company’s chips have obviously soared, and the accompanying margin expansion goes a very long way towards explaining why earnings growth (both realized and expected) is so robust for the S&P 500.

Recall that Micron was almost singlehandedly responsible for igniting the enormous upside inflection in forward profit expectations which served as the fundamental underpinning for the index rally off the Iran war lows.

The figure above, from Goldman, gives you a sense of just how dramatic the upside inflection was — and how company analysts expect profitability to remain elevated looking out at least to 2028.

As discussed at some length last week in “There’s A Lot Riding On The Chips,” S&P earnings growth’s highly sensitive to semi margins, which is why investors were dialed in on Micron’s profitability metrics Wednesday.

Gross margin for the current quarter will be “approximately” 86.25%, the company said. That’d be narrower by a whole 75bps versus last quarter. That seems — I don’t know — marginal in the context of the overall figure, but again, this is a hugely important metric for aggregate index profit growth and analysts expected non-GAAP gross margin to be flat QoQ at Micron.

The company did explain why profitability might shrink slightly this quarter. On the call, CFO Mark Murphy cited “incentive comp.” So, workers. And specifically the imperative of paying them.

The good news on that front is that if “Super Intelligence” (and yes, Micron used Donald Trump’s new name for AI in its investor materials) continues to develop along its current trajectory, companies may not need as many humans going forward.

Hell, with any luck, they won’t need any humans at all. Other than the ones who occupy the C-Suite, of course. Somebody’s gotta buy the yachts and the Ferraris.

Micron also lifted its overall spending guide for fiscal 2027, citing “construction capex to help accelerate clean room space availability” into 2028 “and beyond.”

Micron’s up 240% or so YTD, which works out to a ~$860 billion gain in market cap.