The More You Spend…

There was a time, not that long ago, when companies would get rewarded simply for announcing more spending on AI-related projects.  Alas, the headiest of those days are behind us, as evidenced by the recent underperformance of hyperscalers.  Instead, the focus moved toward the recipients of that spending, such as semiconductor stocks.  Today, however, we see that latter sector boosted by one of its leaders, Micron Technology (MU), announcing a $25 billion, 10-year spending plan and the s $28 billion offering by SK Hynix.

In some ways, this is a natural extension of the “makers/takers” theme that we have been discussing recently.  If the hyperscaler “takers” continue to buy chips and other components that are necessary for data centers, eventually those “makers” will want to expand their capabilities.  It’s an obvious decision: if a company can make outsized profits, then it behooves management to invest in ways that will hopefully lead to even greater profitability. 

Now, a good portion of memory chipmaker profits have been the result of tight supplies of memory chips, and this heavy investment will undoubtedly ease some of those constraints.  MU’s managers undoubtedly know this, but they are implicitly expecting that demand will remain high enough to justify their investments as they roll out over the 10 years.  This is the risk of managing and investing in historically cyclical industries. 

We’re currently in a period where demand for chips has been growing far faster than the industry’s ability to supply them.  Economics dictates that prices will rise if demand outstrips supply, and that is clearly occurring now.  The natural reaction to higher prices is for supplies to increase and/or buyers to seek substitutes.  The MU plans and the Hynix financing are early steps toward increasing supplies. (I have heard anecdotes about engineers seeking solutions that require fewer expensive memory chips but have no concrete evidence of that.)  The problem, of course, involves timing.  When you have situations with long demand cycles that require long-term solutions, there is an inherent risk that those cycles can fall out of sync. 

This is one reason why we don’t always see semiconductor valuations, such as Price/Earnings ratios, go crazy even when the demand for their products is scorching hot.  Investors have seen these cycles before and know that there is an inevitable point when supply meets or exceeds demand.  Sometimes that is because demand peters out; sometimes it is because the manufacturers over-expand; sometimes it is a combination of both. 

Today’s move tells us that investors are quite confident that demand will remain sufficiently high for a long enough time for MU’s announced spending and Hynix’s anticipated plans to increase their bottom lines.  Given the current pace of industry spending, that confidence is quite understandable.

Finally, let’s not forget that even within the semiconductor industry there are subsets of makers and takers.  Today, we learned that MU intends to be a big taker of semiconductor equipment.  The makers of that equipment are generally having very solid performances today.   Among them, we see ASML up by about 5%, and Applied Materials (AMAT) and Lam Research (LRCX) each roughly matching MU’s 7% rally.  It’s a good day for the “takers,” even within the “makers and takers” theme in that industry.