According to the Zhutong Finance APP, Edgewater Research has lowered its price forecasts for NAND and DRAM. In response to this news, Micron Technology (MU.US) fell by about 4% on Tuesday, while Western Digital (WDC.US) fell by about 5%.

Edgewater Research analyst believes that the NAND demand forecasts for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) will continue to shrink, while datacenter NAND demand is expected to remain soft in 2025, with only a slight year-on-year increase.

Analysts state that suppliers are urging customers to sign long-term agreements for 2025 and have, in some cases, increased the demand forecasts for 2025 in these long-term agreements. Suppliers also note their willingness to support any or all demand in 2025. Furthermore, concerns about shortages of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and enterprise SSD (eSSD) seem to have largely disappeared.

Analysts additionally report that price forecasts across all sectors, including personal computers (PCs), mobile devices, servers, as well as NAND and DRAM, have once again been lowered. The rebalancing targets for PC and mobile device OEMs are still expected to be achieved in the second quarter of 2025, with orders aligning with actual demand growth in the second quarter or latter half of 2025.

Analysts state that feedback from the supply chain indicates a disconnect between the forecasted limited supply growth and tight supply for 2025, and the industry reality (which may see oversupply and price pressures at least through the first half of 2025). Predictions for pricing and demand in 2025 are becoming increasingly cautious. Analysts expect feedback over the coming months to be very unstable, depending on corporate demand; the success of Samsung Electronics' HBM and/or shift to standard DRAM, as well as speculation on reduced NAND utilization rates.

Analysts have a mixed short-term view on Micron Technology, but a positive long-term view. They add that industry feedback is becoming more cautious, weakening their optimistic outlook for Micron Technology in the first half of 2025. Analysts state that Micron Technology still has some unique catalysts that can drive its performance to outperform large caps, including stock price increases for HBM and eSSD.

The analyst pointed out that the feedback on Micron Technology's relative position in these markets continues to improve, with the average selling price and profit margin expected to increase in the next two to three quarters. In addition, in the long term, the analyst still believes that Micron Technology is in a more favorable position in terms of technological transformation, product portfolio (eSSD, HBM), and cost structure/assets balance sheet.