Currently, the semiconductor industry is booming. Demand for computer memory products, as well as the continued technological improvements of the products major semiconductor companies are exhibiting, has lead to quite an increase in profit across the industry.

One of these major semiconductor companies is Micron (NASDAQ:$MU). The company saw a 92% rise in revenue in its 2017 third quarter compared to its 2016 third quarter. As well, Micron saw a rise in gross profit margin from 18% in its 2016 third quarter to 48% in 2017’s third quarter. Both the rise in revenue and gross profit margin resulted in a non-GAAP net income of $1.9 billion for Micron’s third quarter, or about $1.62 earnings per share.

In its conference call to investors, Micron explained what allowed the company to see such solid results in its most recent 2017 quarter: better pricing environment for DRAM, better mix of products offered by Micron, and a lower cost-per-bit for both DRAM and NAND. The company also explained what they will be expecting due to the recent strong quarterly report.

Continued Margin Surge

Thanks to the booming semiconductor industry, Micron is expecting a continued growth in gross profit margin. For its coming quarter, Micron estimates it will see a gross profit margin of around 47% to 51% and an earnings per share between $1.73 to $1.87.

More RAM For Smartphone Makers

For its most recent quarter, about 20% of Micron’s DRAM sales was for mobile devices. This is because, according to Micron, smartphone producers have continued to add more DRAM to their products. As a result, the semiconductor company’s mobile business saw about $1.1 billion in revenue and $304 million in operating income in its most recent quarter.

In its upcoming quarter, Micron is expecting continued success in this business sector. “When you look at the content of DRAMs in the mobile market, it really continues to increase nicely, going from about a little over a gigabyte per phone to about doubling by the 2018 timeframe,” Sanjay Mehrotra, Micron’s CEO, explained. “The same trend is clearly happening on the high-end phones, too, where you are starting to see 4 and 6-gigabyte DRAM content.” 

If one considers the overall trend year-over-year in 2017, as well as the trajectory in 2018, the mobile market looks like it will continue to be strong, Mehrotra added.

Success in Semiconductor Technology

After highlighting its 12 gigabits per second GDDR5X, the current fastest discrete DRAM in the semiconductor industry, Mehrotra ensured shareholders that Micron will continue to improve and expand on its graphics and high-performance memory technology.

In its most recent quarter, Micron’s graphics memory business saw a strong revenue growth. Mehrotra cited the growth to be largely due to an increase in the game console market as well as new PC graphics card products.

Graphics memory has made up about 20% of the Micron’s total 64% in revenue in its DRAM business.

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