What happened
Shares of Micron Technology (MU -2.45%) rose 27.3% in November 2020, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The rally started when management held an upbeat presentation at a mid-month industry conference.
So what
The memory chip maker's stock closed 6.8% higher on Nov. 16, following a strong business update from CFO David Zinsner at the Sanford Bernstein Operational Decisions Conference.
Zinsner said that everything is coming up aces in the third quarter, both in terms of market demand and Micron's operating results. Looking ahead, he saw several significant tailwinds for memory sales in 2021 and beyond.
"Mobile should be really strong, given 5G. The cloud business, which is healthy today, should actually see good growth next year," Zinsner said. "Graphics is doing well for the quarter. We would expect graphics to do well throughout the year. Automotive is already starting to see a recovery."
Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
All of the target markets mentioned above are known for their growing memory-chip needs. Smartphones require a lot of extra memory in order to access 5G networks. Cloud servers always consume tons of memory to run data analytics and artificial intelligence services. The latest generation of memory processors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD -0.53%) and NVIDIA (NVDA -1.73%) uses a lot of memory in their ray tracing features. Modern cars lean on an increasing number of processing functions, and I'm not even talking about self-driving cars here.
It's no surprise to see Micron doing well with all of these growth engines behind it.
