Micron CFO: No 'line of sight' for when memory shortage will end

The memory industry has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI build-out. For proof, look no further than Micron's ( MU ) Q4 results .

Earnings per share came in at $33.42 , up a stunning 1,002% over the $3.03 the company saw in the same quarter last year. Revenue was just as impressive, climbing 379% to $54.23 billion from 11.31 billion in Q4 2025.

All of that is being driven by insatiable demand for the company's memory and storage, which are essential for powering AI models and services from tech giants ranging from OpenAI ( OPAI.PVT ) and Anthropic ( ANTH.PVT ) to Google ( GOOG , GOOGL ), Amazon ( AMZN ), Microsoft ( MSFT ), Meta ( META ), and SpaceX ( SPCX ).

And Micron says it doesn't expect things to slow down anytime soon.

In his prepared remarks during the company's Q4 earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said he expects demand to easily outstrip supply for the years ahead.

"As strong as fiscal 2026 was, we expect fiscal 2027 to be even better," Mehrotra said.

"Industry demand has strengthened since our last earnings call, and we expect memory and storage supply-demand conditions to be much tighter in fiscal 2027 and 2028 than they were in 2026," he added.

Micron CFO Mark Murphy told Yahoo Finance that part of the reason is how customers use the company's memory components.

"Demand is broadening across what we call the memory hierarchy, which are different forms of memory used in systems … we just see market conditions remaining very tight, and memory and storage becoming more and more important to customer platform performance," he said.

To meet that customer demand, Micron is building out additional memory and storage manufacturing facilities, but those will take years to complete. And even when the first few wafers begin to roll off the lines, it still takes months for production to fully ramp up.

"We need to build the capacity for all the growth that we see. There's no line of sight on when supply will be sufficient to meet demand," he explained.

The memory industry traditionally goes through boom-and-bust periods during which demand and prices spike. Companies like Micron respond by building out the necessary supply to meet customer needs, only for demand to collapse and prices to follow.

The last time boom was during COVID, when companies and consumers bought up as many computers, smartphones, and other products as possible to work from home and stay entertained during lockdowns.

But that pulled future demand for those devices forward, and sales plummeted in the years after, crushing memory prices.