Micron's last 10-Q, before Wednesday: the unit that sells memory for phones and PCs shipped fewer bits than a year earlier and still had the highest gross margin in the company
Micron reports fiscal Q4 on Wednesday. Most of the preview talk is about HBM and the $50bn guide. The last 10-Q, for the quarter ended 28 May and filed on 25 June, has a business-unit table that tells a slightly different story about where the margin came from.
\*\*The four units, as the 10-Q describes them\*\*
\- Cloud Memory (CMBU): "memory solutions for large hyperscale cloud customers, and HBM for all data center customers"
\- Core Data Center (CDBU): mid-tier cloud, enterprise and OEM data center customers
\- Mobile and Client (MCBU): "memory and storage solutions for the mobile and client segments"
\- Automotive and Embedded (AEBU)
\*\*Revenue and gross margin, quarter to 28 May, with the year-earlier margin in brackets\*\*
\- Cloud Memory: $13.77bn, 83.5% (58.2%)
\- Core Data Center: $11.52bn, 86.7% (37.5%)
\- Mobile and Client: $11.52bn, 87.3% (24.2%)
\- Automotive and Embedded: $4.63bn, 79.0% (25.7%)
So the unit that holds HBM had the lowest gross margin of the three large units that quarter.
\*\*How Mobile and Client got there\*\*
The 10-Q gives a reason for each unit's revenue change on the year. For Mobile and Client: "MCBU revenue increased 254% and 190%, respectively, primarily due to increases in average selling prices, partially offset by lower bit shipments." The other three units all cite higher prices and higher bit shipments. Mobile and Client is the only one where volume went the other way.
\*\*Other lines in the same filing\*\*
\- Share of revenue: Mobile and Client 28%, down from 35% a year earlier. Core Data Center 28%, up from 16%. Cloud Memory 33%, from 36%.
\- "Revenue from one customer was 10% and 16% (primarily included in the CMBU segment) of total revenue for the first nine months of 2026 and 2025, respectively."
\- Depreciation and amortisation in Mobile and Client fell to $678m from $877m. It rose in each of the other three units.
\*\*What the guide covers\*\*
The Q4 outlook is revenue of $50.0bn ± $1.0bn and gross margin of approximately 86%, the same on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. It is not broken out by unit.
\*\*What the filing doesn't tell you\*\*
The 10-Q gives the direction of price and volume for each unit but no figures, so the 254% can't be split into price and bits from the filing alone. And the unit margins exclude $143m of unallocated cost of goods sold, which is why they sit slightly above the company-wide 84.6%.