Micron Halts Huawei Shipments; Stock Down After Quarterly Results

of Micron fiscal Q4 sales, he told investors Tuesday. The memory-chip supplier “had a one-month notice before halting shipments,” so there was “limited ability to shift supply to other customers,” said Mehrotra. Micron expects a “negative impact” to sales from the suspension in Q1 and “to a lesser extent” in Q2, he said. “Our well-established relationships with mobile customers worldwide will allow us to offset the impact of these restrictions by the end of fiscal Q2.” Micron applied for Commerce Department licenses to sell to the Chinese telecom gearmaker, the CEO said: It wants a “growing opportunity to engage again with Huawei.” The “nature” of the semiconductor supply chain is “it does take awhile to shift that production," said Mehrotra. Though Micron is “well-positioned to win” in 5G as a memory-chip supplier to smartphone OEMs, demand was “impacted by the pandemic in a meaningful way in calendar 2020,” said Mehrotra. The company expects a 10% global decline in unit shipments this year compared with 2019, he said. “As we look ahead to calendar 2021, we expect a rebound.” Micron expects 5G handset volume could grow to about 500 million units globally in 2021, from 200 million in 2020, said Mehrotra. That’s on par with Qualcomm’s forecast. Chief Financial Officer Dave Zinsner said Q4 revenue of $6.1 billion was up 24%. Micron expects about a 15% sequential revenue decline in Q1 to $5.2 billion. The pandemic is affecting the company in other ways (see 2009300040). The stock closed down 7.4% Wednesday at $46.96.