Micron Drops 4% as Chinese Rival CXMT Plans New Plant
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- Micron Technology shares dropped 4% to $790.50 in Monday premarket trading, even after a 600%+ rally over the prior 12 months.
- ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is considering building a second memory-chip plant in Beijing that could push its monthly production capacity past 600,000 semiconductor wafers.
- CXMT, the world's fourth-largest DRAM maker with 8% market share in Q1 (up from 3% a year earlier, per Counterpoint Research), recently went public at a valuation near $500 billion.
- SK Hynix shares slid 8.8% in South Korean trading on Monday and its ADRs fell 2.9% premarket, as the broader memory complex priced in CXMT's expansion.
- Apple has been pushing the Trump administration to ensure CXMT is not added to a U.S. trade blacklist, because it wants to use CXMT chips in devices sold in China, the WSJ reported.
- Micron still holds 22% of the global DRAM market, behind SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics but well ahead of CXMT's 8%.
Why it matters: CXMT's IPO-funded plan to add a second Beijing plant and roughly double wafer output moves Chinese memory from background noise into direct competition with Micron (22% share), SK Hynix, and Samsung — and Apple's quiet lobbying to keep CXMT off a U.S. blacklist reveals Cupertino treats the same firm as a critical China-market supplier, not just a rival to contain.
