9AM Hour: Micron Soars on Blowout Quarter, Apple Hikes Prices, Nasdaq Rally Hopes Fizzle 6/25/26

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Carl Quintanilla (0:57)

Market Moving Insight and Analysis join Jim Cramer, David Faber, and me, Carl Quintanilla on the opening bell hour of CNBC Squawk on the Street.

Good Thursday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with David Faber, Mike Santoli at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Cramer has the morning off. Bulls doing their best to narrow these losses for June, and they'll get some help today from Micron's blowout quarter, steady PCE print, which while elevated at three-year highs, isn't doing a whole lot to dampen consumer spending. Oil's another tailwind, West Texas closer to 69, 10-year yield near some six-week lows. A roadmap begins with reigniting this AI rally. Micron's results and guidance, fueling some big gains across tech ahead of the open.

David Faber (1:45)

Plus, JPMorgan Chase just heard about this from Leslie. It's reshuffling the top ranks. Two new co-president roles have been created. As long-time veteran and head of its consumer banking division, Marion Lake exits the bank.

Mike Santoli (1:58)

And Apple raising prices on MacBook and iPad due to the memory crunch, a hinting of more price hikes to come from there.

Carl Quintanilla (2:06)

Let's begin, though, with Micron surging in the pre-market, leading the tech rally after posting that blowout quarter. Company benefits from an AI-fueled demand amid a shortage in memory chips, which we now think will last even longer. Here's Marotra on last night's call.

Sanjay Marotra (2:21)

With respect to supply, our customers are recognizing that supply shortages in memory and storage will take considerable time to improve. Even as we expect industry supply to improve gradually in 2028, we currently do not have line of sight as to when memory supply will be able to catch up with increasing demand.

Carl Quintanilla (2:45)

Some remarkable elements about the quarter. Net income doubles quarter on quarter. Gross margin guidance is better than even Nvidia's at their top. And then today, Citi goes to $1400. DA. Davidson, $2,000.

Mike Santoli (2:57)

Yeah, the superlatives are pretty well justified by the numbers in terms of the pace of the growth and the improvement. Just since January 30th, so basically since their prior earnings report, earnings forecasts for the current fiscal year have doubled. For next fiscal year, they're on August year, tripled. And for the following year, also tripled. But as with Nvidia, in its hyper growth quarters, there's still a bit of hesitation of how far out we can project this. So Micron is now emphasizing these longer-term purchase agreements. They call them strategic customer agreements with a price floor. And it's essentially a more solid order book than they've had in the past. And you don't have to be heroic about putting a multiple on if these are secure earnings.

I do think it's a huge question as to whether what this represents is just one company rationing scarce supply with massive price gains. It's going all to their margins. Everybody else pays. And what are the coattails of this type of move going to be? The memory names themselves are hoarding all the incremental profit margin for this period. That's a six year of NVIDIA versus Micron.

And so you see basically it's kind of the same percentage game over that time, paced differently. But look at how NVIDIA has flattened out, obviously, in the last year, year and a half, not because earnings growth has stopped, but because the acceleration phase ended.

David Faber (4:25)

84.9% gross margins, which was up over 10 points, obviously, a record. You're talking again about operating cash flow, 25 billion for the quarter, free cash flow, 18 billion a record. And to your point, Mike, there are these new agreements.

They're talking about the floor and the margin they're getting at the floor of them being higher than anything they've ever seen.

Mike Santoli (4:51)