Micron Will Report Its Fiscal Q4 Earnings During the Market's Worst Month. History Says This Is What Happens Next.
Jack Delaney, The Motley Fool
Mon, August 31, 2026 at 12:44 PM GMT+3 6 min read
On Sept. 30, Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) will share its fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter earnings results. The stock closed trading on Friday at $932.86, having somewhat recovered from a broad chip sell-off this summer that sent Micron below $740 in late July.
Still, the stock price has a ways to go if it's going to return to its 52-week high of $1,255, and shareholders are hoping this report will provide the fuel it needs. That said, September is a notoriously tough month for the markets.
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The S&P 500, for example, has averaged a negative return in September from 1928 through 2023. Given how Micron has historically performed in September, shareholders may want to brace themselves for a volatile month.
The historical performance of Micron stock in September
From 2017 to 2025, in September, Micron has averaged a 4.1% gain. But if you look more closely at the data, there is an outlier on the positive side, and a set of negative returns worth noting.
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2025 return: 40%
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2024 return: 7.7%
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2023 return: -2.7%
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2022 return: -11.3%
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2021 return: -3.6%
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2020 return: 3.1%
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2019 return: -5.3%
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2018 return: -13.8%
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2017 return: 23%
The average result for its recent Septembers is skewed by the 40% return in 2025. That 2025 performance does all the heavy lifting to produce that positive average return, as the stock has produced a negative return in five of those nine Septembers, and for the eight years prior to 2025, the average September return was negative.
That said, after September, things usually have started looking better for Micron. For October, from 2017 to 2025, Micron stock has averaged a 5.3% gain, with positive returns five out of nine times. November is even better, with the stock averaging a 7.8% gain and ending the month up six out of nine times. Micron has posted slightly muted returns in December, with an average gain of 2.9%. It has, however, delivered a gain five out of nine times in December.
Bracing for seasonality
From what history has shown us since 2017, September is likely to be a volatile month for Micron. On top of that, if it underperforms expectations for its 2026 fourth-quarter earnings report on Sept. 30, it could cap off a rough month for the stock.
What's happened in the past, however, doesn't provide any guarantees. Micron's stock price could just as easily skyrocket in September as it could drop significantly, or even finish the month flat. But paying heed to the market's seasonality offers investors a chance to get more mentally prepared, as it could be a tough month. That preparedness can help shareholders avoid making knee-jerk decisions and panic-selling if Micron stock were to struggle in the short term.
What moves Micron meaningfully next
What's more important for long-term Micron shareholders will be whether it can shed its image as a boom-or-bust stock tied to cyclicality.
Currently, Micron has significant pricing power because it provides critical memory and storage solutions that enable artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies to operate effectively, and the sector's production capacity can't keep up with soaring demand.
For instance, gross margin for Micron's cloud memory business unit in the third quarter of its fiscal 2026 was 83%, a huge boost from the 58% in the prior-year period. A gross margin boost was also seen across the board for its other divisions, including its core data center unit, mobile and client unit, and automotive and embedded business unit.
But the leading memory makers are building out new foundries to boost production, and when supply catches up to demand, their pricing power will fade.
To counter that, Micron is locking its biggest clients into long-term contracts, or what it calls strategic customer agreements. With these contracts, it can set favorable floor prices while also locking in reliable revenue for when supply catches up with demand. In the company's earnings call for Q3 2026, it reported signing 16 strategic customer agreements and expected to receive financial commitments and cash deposits totaling $22 billion.
That said, it doesn't appear that the market has quite bought into the premise that Micron is becoming a less cyclical company. Its forward price-to-earnings ratio is 6, indicating there's skepticism about the memory maker's earnings growth potential.
I still like Micron as a long-term investment, even as the stock is up 227% thus far in 2026 as of this writing. The global AI market is expected to grow in value from $617.6 billion in 2026 to $1.4 trillion by 2032, according to research by Statista. As a key supplier of memory and storage solutions for data centers, cloud providers, and hyperscalers, Micron can continue to benefit from this trend.
To get the stock price moving, it just has to convince investors that cyclicality has become less of an issue for the company than it was in the past, and that it's effectively preparing for when supply catches up with demand through its strategic customer agreements.
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Jack Delaney has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Micron Technology. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Micron Will Report Its Fiscal Q4 Earnings During the Market's Worst Month. History Says This Is What Happens Next. was originally published by The Motley Fool
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