Analyst Moves on AI‑Related Stocks – Week of 28 June 2026
Susquehanna Securities raised its Micron Technology price target from $1,750 to $2,000 after the memory‑chip maker posted record‑breaking fiscal third‑quarter results. Micron reported revenue of $41.46 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $25.11, both well above consensus estimates of $35.91 billion and $20.86 respectively, while gross margin expanded to 84.9% versus the expected 80.8%. For the current quarter the company guided revenue of roughly $50 billion and EPS of about $31, again ahead of Street expectations. Central to the upgrade are 16 signed strategic customer agreements (SCAs) that are non‑cancellable, take‑or‑pay contracts typically lasting five years; these agreements cover roughly one‑fifth of DRAM bits and one‑third of NAND bits, and Micron expects more than half of total revenues to eventually fall under such contracts. The contracts include price floors that lock in gross margins above prior‑cycle peaks, even in a downturn scenario. Susquehanna now projects free cash flow in excess of $110 billion in fiscal 2027, the bulk of which should flow to shareholders. Micron’s DRAM revenue more than tripled year‑on‑year to $31.3 billion, with HBM4 ramping at twice the pace of the prior generation and customer commitments extending into 2028 and beyond. NAND revenue nearly quadrupled to $9.9 billion, and data‑center SSD revenue exceeded $5 billion in the quarter alone. The company sees the HBM total addressable market crossing $100 billion in 2027, a year earlier than previously expected, and Susquehanna models annualized EPS potentially reaching $200 as Micron exits FY27.
Argus initiated coverage of the newly listed SpaceX with a Hold rating, arguing that the company’s record‑breaking IPO, which raised $85.7 billion in proceeds and valued the firm at above $1.75 trillion—the largest IPO in history—implies a price‑to‑sales multiple of roughly 95 times 2025 revenues. Analyst Steve Silver flagged the valuation as a key concern, noting that SpaceX is not yet consistently profitable and that its operating plan blends characteristics of a mature infrastructure business with a venture‑style growth investment. He warned that it will likely be years before SpaceX’s multiples converge to more normal levels. Since the IPO, shares have been volatile, climbing as much as 67% above the offering price before pulling back to trade around 10% above it. Argus expects volatility to persist given a tight share supply, early inclusion in major equity indices, and looming lock‑up expirations, but left the door open to an upgrade if the stock falls sharply on non‑fundamental factors or if revenues and earnings accelerate faster than expected.
Morgan Stanley upgraded Qualcomm to an equal‑weight rating from underweight, raising its price target to $231 from $146 after the chipmaker’s investor day disclosed a $5 billion data‑center revenue forecast for fiscal 2027. Analyst Joseph Moore acknowledged that the bank had been wrong to remain skeptical of Qualcomm’s AI ambitions and highlighted that the $5 billion forecast is at least twice the prior expectation. He was more cautious on the longer‑term target of $15 billion in data‑center revenue by fiscal 2029, describing it as aspirational, and flagged execution risk around Qualcomm’s planned entry into the server‑CPU market in mid‑2028, noting intense competition from NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and custom silicon from cloud providers. Moore stopped short of an overweight rating, citing better value elsewhere and noting smartphone headwinds, but said the credible management team and the stock’s underperformance relative to other AI winners made the upgrade difficult to resist.
UBS trimmed its combined semiconductor and hardware weighting in its AI investment strategy to roughly 61% from about 76% after a Micron‑driven rally lifted the SOXX index 4% in a single session and 10% across June. Profit‑taking was concentrated in small‑ and mid‑cap AI supply‑chain names across optics, baseboard management controllers, substrates, cooling, advanced packaging and analog components. Despite the reduction, UBS retained an overweight of roughly 20‑25 percentage points relative to the Nasdaq 100’s approximately 42% AI semiconductor and hardware exposure. In parallel, the bank increased exposure to more defensive parts of the AI ecosystem to around 20% from less than 1% in early June, focusing on data‑center operators, telcos and select payments names with prudent balance sheets and stable dividend profiles. UBS continues to favor foundry exposure such as TSMC, semiconductor capital equipment makers like Applied Materials, and memory names such as SK Hynix, while maintaining a significant underweight to the “Magnificent Seven” with a combined portfolio weight of approximately 18%.
Bernstein raised its price targets on the memory‑chip trio Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, forecasting a sharp rise in HBM prices that it expects to drive significant earnings revisions across the sector, while warning that surging memory costs could inflate AI infrastructure spending by as much as 30%. The broker lifted its target on Samsung to KRW 440,000 from KRW 225,000, on SK Hynix to KRW 3,300,000 from KRW 1,150,000, and on Micron to $1,300 from $510, maintaining Outperform ratings on all three and keeping an Underperform rating on KIOXIA, which has no HBM exposure. Bernstein’s core argument is that HBM prices need to rise substantially to close a widening profitability gap with conventional DRAM. Since Q3 2025, conventional DRAM prices have surged roughly 4.5 times while HBM prices, locked in by annual contracts, have barely moved. Consequently, deploying capacity to conventional DRAM currently generates over twice the revenue and nearly three times the gross profit per wafer compared to HBM. Analyst Mark Li said memory suppliers and GPU/XPU companies are negotiating 2027 HBM prices now to narrow the gap, modeling a 2‑to‑2.5 times increase in HBM prices next year—somewhat below what would be needed to fully close the gap. The inflation risk for AI capex stems from how HBM price increases flow through the supply chain; unlike conventional DRAM and NAND, HBM is packaged inside GPUs and forms part of the cost base of chip suppliers such as Nvidia. If Nvidia operates at a 75% gross margin and wants to preserve that margin, it would need to mark up any HBM price increase by a factor of four when passing costs on to customers. Combined with higher conventional DRAM and NAND prices, Li estimates hyperscalers could face data‑center capex “higher by 30% just to cover higher memory costs.”