MU is a major semiconductor manufacturing company, focused on DRAM and NAND memory chips. It reported 2Q23 results (its fiscal year ends in August) the night before last. The results weren’t great, with the company–as I read the financials–around breakeven on a cash in-cash out basis, after initiating layoffs and a substantial reduction in capital spending.
The stock was up by 7%+ yesterday, despite this. How so? MU said that things had stopped getting worse. Some customers had begun to get their inventories of MU products under control, although aggregate customer inventories appear to still be higher than normal. And MU now figures that business will be back to normal sometime in fiscal 2025.
Conventional portfolio management wisdom is that this is how commodity-like stocks work–buy them when things look bad but are starting to turn, and remember to sell them when there seems to be nothing but blue sky ahead.
other stuff
One of the heads of Blackstone, Steve Schwarzman, appears to have said he thinks the failure of Silicon Valley Bank was due to cellphones.
The head of upscale home furnishings company, RH, Gary Friedman, appears to be blaming what he sees as erratic and unpredictable actions by the Fed for the weakness in his business.
Cathie Wood of ARK appears to be blaming the 70%+ fall in her ARK Innovation Trust portfolio since early 2021 on the Federal Reserve’s lack of “market” experience.
As one of its inducements for DIS to establish and develop Disneyworld, the state government in Florida granted control of most local civic matters in the vicinity to a commission to be staffed by DIS. After Disneyworld employees compelled DIS to issue a weak and belated defense of LGBTQ rights, governor DeSantis decided to punish DIS by replacing its commissioners with ones he controls–and which would presumably be hostile to DIS interests. The new commissioners have found, however, that the old commission transferred virtually all its powers to the Disney company just before being disbanded. My guess is that the curtain has only gone up on this drama, which could end up having major repercussions.