Oops, something went wrong
Skip to navigation Skip to main content Skip to right column
SanDisk and Micron surge as Apple confirms memory price pass-through
Frank DeMatteo
Thu, June 18, 2026 at 10:44 AM EDT4 min read
Investing.com -- Memory chip stocks are rallying sharply Thursday after Apple CEO Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal in an exclusive interview published June 17 that price increases across iPhone, Mac and iPad lines are "unavoidable," signaling that the world's most valuable consumer-electronics company can no longer shield customers from a historic surge in memory costs.
SanDisk is trading at $2,144.40, up +9.48% intraday and within reach of its 52-week high of $2,167.33, while Micron Technology is at $1,111.91, up +6.59% and just below its own 52-week peak of $1,116.25. Both stocks have been on extraordinary runs over the past year — SanDisk has gained more than 4,400% in the past 52 weeks as NAND pricing entered a structural shortage cycle, and Micron has added roughly 810% — but Thursday's session marks a fresh catalyst: explicit confirmation from Apple that memory suppliers now hold the pricing leverage.
Cook's remarks represent a meaningful strategic reversal. Apple's CFO had flagged on the April earnings call that gross margins would face pressure from rising component costs in the second half of 2026 but stopped short of quantifying the hit or specifying the company's response. Cook's Wall Street Journal interview resolves that ambiguity directly, with Cook saying Apple is no longer able to absorb the increases.
The backdrop is severe. TrendForce data published June 16 shows memory contract prices surged more than 100% in the first half of 2026, with structural shortages expected to keep NOR Flash and SLC NAND prices rising into the second half of the year. Omdia forecasts global DRAM revenue will reach $372 billion in 2026, a 147% year-over-year increase, underscoring a supercycle that has already reshaped the entire semiconductor sector. AI-focused hyperscalers, willing to offer large prepayments and enter long-term supply agreements, have effectively crowded consumer electronics buyers like Apple to the back of the DRAM and NAND supply queue.
Mizuho TMT specialist Jordan Klein put numbers to what that supply dynamic means for Apple's cost structure. "Cost of memory is up 80-90% in '26 since end '25. It's up triple digits year-over-year. Memory BOM costs as a percentage of smartphone or PC was in the mid-teens as a percentage of total. Now this will rise to 25-30%," Klein wrote in a note Thursday. He added that analyst reports assume at least a $100 to $200 average selling price increase on iPhone 18 models, and argued the shift is ultimately positive for Apple's gross margins, margins that would have "suffered materially" had the company continued absorbing the cost increases. Klein added that the Apple news "just supports my bullish view on memory stocks and that a lot of investors still under-appreciate demand and pricing trends into '27/'28."
Story Continues
The supply tightness is not limited to legacy NAND. SK Hynix on Thursday shipped samples of its 12-layer next-generation HBM4E chips to major customers, achieving 16 Gbps per-pin speeds, a development that illustrates how leading-edge memory capacity continues to be allocated toward AI and hyperscaler workloads rather than consumer devices, keeping pressure on the supply available to Apple and its peers.
The key uncertainty hanging over Apple itself is demand elasticity. Klein acknowledged the core investor worry: "Biggest risk and reason Apple stock is basically flat: how will higher prices impact consumer demand and unit growth? Better gross margins on weaker revenue growth is sort of a wash at best." That calculus explains why Apple shares were muted even as its memory suppliers surged.
For Micron and SanDisk investors, however, the read is unambiguously constructive. Apple's disclosure functions as demand confirmation: even the buyer with the greatest scale and negotiating power in consumer electronics is now publicly validating both the magnitude of memory cost inflation and its durability. Klein's framing is that when a buyer of Apple's clout "gets pushed to the back of the supply line in DRAM and NAND," the structural advantage for memory producers is unlikely to reverse soon.
The next hard data point will come with Apple's iPhone 18 launch, expected in fall 2026, when actual product pricing will either confirm or qualify Cook's signal. Until then, the memory trade's direction hinges on whether contract price momentum described by TrendForce extends into the second half of 2026 as forecast, and whether AI-driven hyperscaler demand continues to crowd out the consumer segment that has historically kept memory suppliers' pricing power in check.
Related articles
SanDisk and Micron surge as Apple confirms memory price pass-through
Citi pushes back Fed rate cuts to May after blowout January jobs report
This sector is 'poised for a big, beautiful year': Truist
View Comments
Terms and Privacy Policy
Read Original at Yahoo Finance →