Micron's revenue rose 346% last year while its cost of revenue rose 10%. Is there a precedent for a manufacturer holding a margin like this?
I went through Micron's latest 10-Q properly because the numbers looked like a parsing error. They are not.
Three months to 28 May 2026: revenue of $41.46B, against $9.30B in the same quarter a year earlier. Over that same year the cost of revenue line went from $5.79B to $6.40B. So revenue more than quadrupled and cost moved about ten percent.
The nine-month figure is $78.96B and sits separately in the same document. The quarter really was larger than the whole of the prior fiscal year, which closed at $37.38B.
The mechanism is not mysterious. Fab capacity is committed years ahead, so cost per bit barely moves from quarter to quarter, and revenue ends up close to a price index sitting on a fixed cost base. What I did not expect was the size of it. The gross margin that falls out of those two lines is 84.56%. The best Micron had managed in the 68 quarters it has on file was 58.87%, in fiscal 2018. In fiscal 2023 the same margin was negative.
My actual question, is there a precedent for a manufacturer at this scale holding a gross margin anywhere near this for more than a couple of quarters? I am asking whether the cost line has ever stayed flat once pricing is this good, or whether supply always turns up and closes it.