Micron (MU +5.00%) stock is seeing a valuation pullback in Tuesday's trading. The memory-chip specialist's share price was down 7.1% as of 1 p.m. ET amid a 1.3% level slide for the S&P 500 and a 1.4% decline for the Nasdaq Composite.
Micron announced today that it had started shipping customer sampled for its latest LPDRAM module for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. The stock also received a price-target increase from a high-profile investment firm. Despite the positive news, the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran is dragging the company's share price lower.
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Geopolitical volatility drives sell-offs for tech stocks
After the broader market ended in the green in yesterday's trading, investors appear to be becoming less confident that the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran will arrive at a relatively speed conclusion. Oil prices are surging, and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz threatens to create upward pressures on global energy prices and disrupt trade supply chains. These pressures could result in a sustained uptick for inflation that puts new valuation pressures on Micron and other growth-dependent tech stocks.
NASDAQ: MU
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Micron investors did get some good news today
Micron is now shipping samples for its 256-gigabyte SOCAMM2 LPDRAM module. The new hardware offers the most power-efficient process yet for central processing units used in AI data centers. The company's high-bandwidth-memory (HBM) memory solutions are already best in class for graphics processing units, and the company's latest low-power LPDRAM product suggests the potential for mounting wins if CPUs wind up playing a bigger role in data center operations.
In addition to product news, Goldman Sachs also raised its price target on Micron from $235 per share to $360 per share while also reiterating a neutral rating on the stock. While Goldman's new target level is still below the stock's current share price, the updated forecast signals that the investment firm sees support for the valuation within the range of current levels.
