Good news for the memory sector: the players seem to be acting rationally for a change.
One clear message from the Applied Material's (AMAT) earnings call yesterday is that there has been a dramatic reduction in capital investment in the DRAM and NAND memory chip sectors. The company sees overall chip industry cap ex down 25%-35% this year, with DRAM spending down 50% and NAND flash spending down 15%-plus. A sign of trouble? Well, yeah, everyone has known for months now that both memory sectors are in trouble. But the slowdown in spending should help restore the supply/demand balance and stabilize prices.
That's lead to some rare optimism on the memory chip stocks today:
Micron (MU) today is up 29 cents, or 3.5%, to $8.62.
Qimonda (QI) is up 7 cents, or 1.6%, to $4.59.
SanDisk (SNDK) is up $1.43, or 4.7%, to $32.02. |
