Catenaa, Monday, April 06, 2026- Micron Technology stock is struggling after soaring almost 50% in January, with concerns on the memory sector and the Iran War, and its rival prepares for a $10 billion US listing.
Shares of Micron, the third largest maker of memory chips in the world, blasted out of the gate to start the year, soaring almost 50% in January for the second-best performance in the S&P 500 Index.
But lately, they’ve been weighed down by concerns about the memory sector and uncertainty in the broader market amid the war in Iran.
Despite two big days last week and 3% gain on Monday, the stock is still down nearly 20% since hitting a high three weeks ago, and March was its worst month in almost four years.
The upcoming US listing of South Korean rival SK Hynix will only add to its challenges.
SK Hynix, a key supplier to Nvidia, has filed to list its American depositary receipts this year, a deal that could raise as much as $10 billion.
If that pans out, it would be among the biggest New York debuts by a foreign company. It would also end Micron’s status as the only US-listed supplier of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips, and give American investors another way to play that part of the artificial intelligence buildout.
While Micron is big in the US, it trails SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics Co. in the global DRAM market. In the fourth quarter, SK Hynix garnered 57% of the global revenue for high-bandwidth memory, high-end DRAM, more than twice Micron’s share, according to Counterpoint Research.
Still, Micron shares trade at a slight premium to SK Hynix, although both are relatively inexpensive at around four times forward earnings, which is a significant discount to the S&P 500’s multiple of roughly 20.
SK Hynix ADRs becoming available to US retail investors could narrow the valuation gap.
That said, any potential pressure on Micron from SK Hynix’s ADRs could turn out to be a short-term issue, particularly since at least part of the weakness in Micron’s stock price is from the broad-based risk-off market sentiment as the war in Iran drags on.
Even with Micron’s recent declines, the shares are up 28% this year, and data storage companies like Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate Technologies are among the top performers in the S&P 500.
Over time, Micron and SK Hynix ADRs will likely trade in tandem because a US listing doesn’t change the fundamentals for either company.
To other investors, Micron’s stock could actually generate better returns than SK Hynix’s ADRs over the longer term because the US company’s earnings growth should be faster as it catches up globally.
