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Micron Technology ( MU +2.77% ) has a four-figure price tag again. The memory specialist's stock closed Friday at $1,015.80, back above the $1,000 line after finishing as low as $924 last Monday. And it traded near $1,032 as of this writing, modestly higher Monday morning.
A price like that tends to raise a question that has nothing to do with memory chips: Is a stock split coming? Micron hasn't announced a split, and management hasn't publicly addressed the idea. But the company has split its stock three times before, most recently in 2000.
Image source: Micron. Earnings set the price Micron's share count isn't scarce, and it isn't shrinking. The company had about 1.13 billion shares outstanding as of mid-June, according to its most recent quarterly filing, essentially flat from about 1.12 billion when fiscal 2026 began.
What changed is what each share earns. For the fiscal third quarter, which ended May 28, 2026, Micron earned $24.67 per diluted share, up from $12.07 the quarter before and $1.68 a year earlier. And management expects more.
Its fiscal fourth-quarter guidance calls for $30.73 per diluted share, give or take a dollar. Earnings are still climbing, but the climb is decelerating -- the guided figure implies about 25% sequential growth, down from more than 100% the quarter before. Behind those numbers are surging memory prices, bid up by demand from artificial intelligence (AI) data centers.
In its latest quarterly filing, Micron described AI demand outpacing the industry's ability to add supply. Revenue more than quadrupled year over year in the fiscal third quarter, to $41.5 billion, and gross margin, 37.7% a year earlier, reached 84.6%. The stock followed, first closing above $1,000 in June.
At around $1,032 per share, Micron is worth about $1.2 trillion. No sign of a fourth split All three of Micron's splits came in one stretch. The board approved a 5-for-2 split in 1994, a 2-for-1 the following year, and a final 2-for-1 in March 2000.
That 2000 announcement shows its age. It described a company selling memory chips "and personal computer systems," with its stock trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Today the shares trade on the Nasdaq, and Micron has gone 26 years without a split.
There's fresher precedent among chipmakers, though. Nvidia announced a 10-for-1 split in May 2024, saying the move was meant "to make stock ownership more accessible to employees and investors." Broadcom announced its own 10-for-1 three weeks later. Worth noting: both companies tucked the news inside a quarterly earnings report.
Micron has one of those coming. Its next earnings report, covering the fiscal fourth quarter, is scheduled for Sept. 30, and if a split were on the way, a report like that would be a natural place for it. But nothing I can find points to one being on the agenda.
Would a split change anything? A split wouldn't change much that matters. It multiplies the share count and divides the price, leaving the business's results and every investor's percentage stake exactly where they were.
And because per-share earnings divide by the same number as the price, the price-to-earnings ratio doesn't move, either. The old case for splitting (putting a share within reach of smaller investors) has arguably expired. After all, brokerages now sell fractional shares, and at Fidelity, investors can buy a slice of a stock for as little as $1.
In short, a four-figure price stopped being a barrier years ago. Of course, there is one place where the share price itself still matters. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ( ^DJI +0.71% ) weights its members by share price, not market value.
In its own index announcements, S&P Dow Jones Indices notes that persistently lower-priced stocks have minimal impact on the average. A stock above $1,000 would have the opposite effect, which gives the index committee a reason to look elsewhere -- unless the company splits first. Premium Feature Moneyball Superscore 92 /100 Today's Change ( 2.77 %) $ 28.16 Current Price $ 1,043.96 Is a split coming, then?
I wouldn't bet on one soon. Management hasn't hinted at it, the shares only first closed above $1,000 in June, and the company went 26 years without one. If a split does arrive, I'd expect it to show up the way Nvidia's and Broadcom's did -- inside an earnings report, with no warning.
Ultimately, though, I wouldn't let a split, or the absence of one, move a buy or sell decision. At Micron's valuation (about 6.5 times the fiscal 2027 earnings analysts are forecasting), a drop in profits appears mostly priced in. Whether that skepticism proves right is what will decide the stock.
A split would have no bearing on that.
Source: The Motley Fool
