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Semiconductor stocks were largely in the red on Thursday, amid profit taking by investors, spurred in part by Micron Technology’s (NASDAQ:MU) in-line guidance.
Micron shares fell nearly 7% with more than 37M shares changing hands shortly before 12 p.m. EST, compared to the average daily volume of 21.3M.
Many Wall Street firms praised the results and guidance, pointing out that the company’s artificial intelligence-related benefit is just getting started.
Micron’s results and guidance offered additional insight into other companies in the sector, including Nvidia (NVDA), which sources high-bandwidth memory from Micron. Nvidia shares fell 2.5%, amid continued profit taking by investors, after it briefly became the world’s most valuable company earlier this month.
Nvidia competitors Intel (INTC) and AMD (AMD) fell 0.1% and rose 0.1%, respectively. On Wednesday, Intel showed off the chip industry’s first fully integrated optical compute interconnect chiplet for AI-related use.
Aside from Nvidia, there were other takeaways from Micron’s results, including a rise in capex spending for wafer fab equipment, potentially benefiting Applied Materials (AMAT) and Camtek (CAMT), Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya said.
Applied Materials shares hugged the flat-line, while Camtek rose 5.8%. Other chip equipment suppliers, like Lam Research (LRCX), ASML (ASML) and KLA Corp. (KLAC) saw fractional moves lower.
Most other semiconductor stocks were lower on Thursday, including Qualcomm (QCOM), which has seen its shares tumble nearly 8% over the past week, after hitting a 52-week high on June 18.
Others, such as Broadcom (AVGO), Texas Instruments (TXN) and Analog Devices (ADI) also dipped in midday trading.