We recently published a list of 10 Best AI Stocks to Buy According to Carolina Panthers Owner Billionaire David Tepper. Since Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU) ranks 10th on the list, it deserves a deeper look.
Billionaire David Tepper stands out amongst American hedge fund managers for his two recent moves: his bet on Chinese stocks despite their volatility and underperformance and his early arrival at the AI party.
David Tepper’s passion for investing goes all the way back to his high-school days. He once recalled:
“I remember my dad had made some small investments in a few companies, so I would track them and see how he was doing.”
Tepper bought his first stock when he was in high school — 100 shares of a $2 stock, “but then the whole thing went bankrupt,” he said.
“It was a bad investment, but that didn’t deter me.”
Today, Tepper is worth about $20 billion. He was piling into AI stocks when they were just getting started. This wasn’t a fluke or a one-off success from the billionaire. Data from Bloomberg shows that Tepper has posted annualized returns of 28% for investors, before fees. In 2022, when markets were tumbling amid inflation storm and rising interest rates, Appaloosa returned 12.5%. Tepper’s instincts and grip over financial markets were strong even when he was in his late 20s and 30s, raking in huge profits for Goldman Sachs, which he’d joined in 1985.
Tepper rose to fame at Goldman when his portfolio stood out in the midst of the market crash of 1987.
According to The Alpha Masters: Unlocking the Genius of the World’s Top Hedge Funds, written by Maneet Ahuja, Tepper recalled:
“Going into the crash I had set up my entire portfolio as just short—I had no long positions. I made a fortune during and after the crash,” he says with a chuckle. “It was very cool.” Unfortunately, the rest of the firm didn’t do as well. “I still got a raise but not as much as I should have.”
Tepper’s fund Appaloosa Management has released its latest holdings data and it’s time to see which AI stocks are in the billionaire’s portfolio. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
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Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU)
Billionaire David Tepper’s Stake: $154,547,750
Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya said in a latest note that if volatility dips in the semiconductor industry and the broader market sees a resurgence, Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU) would be one of the outperformers.
BofA Securities believes Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU) is one of the best beaten-down tech stocks presenting an attractive entry point following the latest selloff.
Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya recently also talked about the latest declines in semiconductor stocks. However, the analyst said most of the declines were due to temporary factors and fundamentals are still “intact.”
“AI still the strongest and most dependable area of capex, driven by domestic US tech companies with solid balance sheets, proven monetization and mission-critical imperatives…” Arya said.
Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU) posted quarterly results recently which came in better than expected but the market didn’t welcome the in-line guidance and rising expenses. However, this short-term view misses the fact that Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU) is investing heavily in high bandwidth memory (HBM) production that is expected to generate billions in sales by fiscal 2025 compared with just hundreds of millions in 2024.
After the earnings, Arya reiterated a Buy rating and gave a $170 price target on Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU).
“Mgmt emphasized both CY24 and CY25 volumes are now fully sold out with pricing generally secured, providing visibility to its healthy sales and margin expansions (HBM is GM accretive),” Arya said.
Here is what Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU) said about HBM during fiscal Q3 earnings call:
“Our HBM shipment ramp began in fiscal Q3, and we generated over $100 million in HBM3E revenue in the quarter, at margins accretive to DRAM and overall Company margins. We expect to generate several hundred million dollars of revenue from HBM in fiscal 2024 and multiple billions of dollars in revenue from HBM in fiscal 2025. We expect to achieve HBM market share commensurate with our overall DRAM market share sometime in calendar 2025. Our HBM is sold out for calendar 2024 and 2025, with pricing already contracted for the overwhelming majority of our 2025 supply. We are making significant strides toward expanding our HBM customer base in calendar 2025, as we design-in our industry-leading HBM technology with major HBM customers. We have sampled our 12-high HBM3E product and expect to ramp it into high-volume production in calendar 2025 and increase in mix throughout 2025.”
ClearBridge Value Equity Strategy stated the following regarding Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“Stock selection in the IT sector proved to be the largest contributor to performance, particularly driven by the strong performance of Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) The company, which designs, develops, manufactures and sells memory and storage products, continued its strong performance alongside other AI beneficiaries as the anticipated demand for new and additional storage essential for housing and training large language AI models continues to grow.”
Overall, Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU) ranks 10th on Insider Monkey’s list titled 10 Best AI Stocks to Buy According to Carolina Panthers Owner Billionaire David Tepper. While we acknowledge the potential of Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU), our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than MU but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: Analyst Sees a New $25 Billion “Opportunity” for NVIDIA and Jim Cramer is Recommending These Stocks.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
