Micron Drops 4% as China CXMT Plans Second Plant
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- Micron shares fell 4% to $790.50 in premarket trading Monday as competition from Chinese rival ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) escalated
- ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), the world's fourth-largest DRAM maker, is considering building a second memory-chip plant in Beijing to potentially double output to more than 600,000 semiconductor wafers a month
- CXMT reached a market valuation of close to $500 billion following its recent IPO, with its DRAM market share rising to 8% in Q1 from 3% a year earlier, per Counterpoint Research
- SK Hynix American depositary receipts dropped 2.9% in premarket trading while its shares fell 8.8% in local South Korean trading on Monday
- Apple has lobbied the Trump administration to keep CXMT off a U.S. trade blacklist while pushing to use CXMT's chips in devices sold in China, per The Wall Street Journal
- Micron retains 22% of the global DRAM market—still well ahead of CXMT—after its stock surged more than 600% over the past 12 months
Why it matters: Micron's 4% premarket drop and SK Hynix's 8.8% Seoul slide show investors treating CXMT's expansion plan as a sector-wide threat, not a single-stock issue. CXMT has nearly tripled its DRAM share to 8% in one year, and a second Beijing plant doubling output to 600,000+ wafers monthly would directly pressure Micron's 22% share and incumbent pricing power.
