Prediction: Micron Will Earn More Profit Than Microsoft in Fiscal 2027

Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) fiscal 2026, which ended June 30, was arguably the strongest year in the software giant's history. Revenue grew 18% to $331.8 billion. Net income jumped 31% year over year, to $133.7 billion.

Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) is approaching that number from a different direction. The memory specialist earned $8.5 billion in its fiscal 2025.

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But for the fiscal fourth quarter of 2026, which ended in early September, management guided to earnings of $30.73 per diluted share, plus or minus $1.00, on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis. On about 1.15 billion diluted shares, the guidance works out to about $35 billion of profit in one quarter (about four times what the whole prior fiscal year produced).

Here's my prediction: In fiscal 2027, Micron will earn more than Microsoft. That means beating the year Microsoft is now in, not the one it just reported. It's a bold call, and it relies almost entirely on the price of memory.

Micron's net income was $13.8 billion in the fiscal second quarter of 2026. By the fiscal third quarter (the period ended May 28, 2026), it had hit $28.2 billion. And the new guide indicates a further jump of about 25% from that level, down from more than 100% sequential growth the previous quarter. The dollars keep growing even as the climb slows.

Price, not volume, is doing the work. Average selling prices for DRAM rose in the low-60% range from the quarter before, as reported in Micron's most recent quarterly filing, while shipment volumes increased only a low-single-digit percentage. Micron's gross margin, 37.7% in the prior-year quarter, reached 84.6% in the fiscal third quarter. Put another way, the company is selling only slightly more memory than it did the previous quarter, at far higher prices.

The company releases the quarter's actual results on Sept. 30.

The two companies follow different calendars. Microsoft's fiscal 2027 started in July and runs through next June, while Micron's fiscal 2027 began in early September and runs through about August of next year.

Four quarters at the guided pace would amount to about $141 billion. That would beat Microsoft's fiscal 2026 -- and it's worth pointing out the $133.7 billion Microsoft reported included about $5 billion of gains on its OpenAI investment.