Micron (MU) reported earnings 30 days ago. What’s next for the stock? We take a look at earnings estimates for some clues.

Taiwan’s UMC has pleaded guilty to trade secret theft in the United States and will pay a $60 million fine in a case where it was accused of helping a Chinese state-owned chipmaker steal secrets from Micron Technology Inc. The fine is the second-largest ever in a criminal trade secret prosecution, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said. UMC, formally known as United Microelectronics Corp, China’s Fujian Jinhua and three individuals were indicted in 2018 for conspiracy to steal trade secrets from Micron.

(Bloomberg) — Samsung Electronics Co. warned earnings in the current quarter will decline, saying the strong growth in its mobile and memory business that helped third-quarter profit beat will ease amid intensifying competition and weakening demand.The world’s largest maker of memory chips and personal electronics said net income rose a better-than-expected 52% to 9.27 trillion won ($8.2 billion) in the three months ended September, beating the 7.54 trillion won average of estimates. Samsung foresees capital spending of about 35.2 trillion won this year because of a migration to more advanced chip processes and a buildout of its contract chipmaking business.The South Korean technology giant’s tepid outlook may fuel concern that the remarkable tech sector rally during the pandemic may have run its course. The company joined fellow chipmakers Micron Technology Inc. and Intel Corp. in warning that demand from server customers will weaken amid an inventory correction. Samsung also forecast rising competition in mobile phones and consumer electronics and said it will have to boost spending on marketing.”Concerns over disruptions in supply chain drove chip demand from cloud operators early this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic but the demand cooled down as inventories kept rising,” said Park Sung-soon, an analyst at Cape Investment & Securities. “We are seeing a correction in the memory chip market in 4Q but memory chip prices are expected to rise next year when hyperscalers start expanding their investment in servers.”Samsung Electronics shares have surged nearly 40% from their March lows. The stock slipped as much as 2.4% on Thursday after the earnings report, the most in more than a month.Click here for a live blog on the numbers.Sales of Samsung smartphones jumped nearly 50% during the September quarter as the rollout of its latest Galaxy Note series and a new foldable device reignited demand for premium handsets that had flagged during the coronavirus pandemic. Phone shipments totaled 88 million units, while tablet PCs reached 9 million during the period, according to the company, which is seeking to regain the lead as the world’s largest smartphone maker after losing the crown earlier this year to Huawei.Shelter-in-place measures continued to boost sales of consumer electronics, particularly of higher-end televisions, according to the company. But uncertainties over the pandemic will linger and costs are expected to increase heading into the year-end peak season, it added.Read more: Turns Out, People Do Buy Gadgets in a Pandemic: Tim Culpan“The mobile communications business is likely to see smartphone sales decline and marketing costs increase due to competitive market environment. In consumer electronics, profitability is expected to weaken on growing competition and rising costs, despite solid demand,” Samsung said in the earnings release. “For 2021, the company expects a recovery in overall global demand but uncertainties will remain over the possibility of recurring epidemic waves of Covid-19.”Overall demand for memory exceeded expectations in the third quarter, boosted by rush orders from Huawei Technologies Co. ahead of U.S. sanctions that kicked in last month as well as other mobile customers. While mobile may continue to remain strong in the fourth quarter and into the first half, server orders are likely to be weak with the prolonged pandemic prompting clients to slow orders, Samsung said.Server memory prices are already correcting. Contract prices for 32-gigabyte DRAM server modules fell 9% in the September quarter, according to InSpectrum Tech Inc. Prices for 128-gigabit MLC NAND flash memory chips decreased about 8% in the third quarter. Micron cut capital spending plans last month, warning about weaker demand from some corporate customers and forecast possible oversupply of flash memory chips next year.With its main mobile and chip units set to slow, Samsung is looking to newer businesses to bolster growth. The contract chipmaking division posted record quarterly revenue and the company expects to exceed the industry’s high-single-digit growth “significantly” in 2021. It also plans to expand its fledgling networks business in North America and Japan, after winning a 7.9 trillion won contract to supply 5G wireless solutions to Verizon Communications Inc. during the third quarter.The company further delayed the announcement of a new shareholder return policy, telling analysts Thursday it now plans to release details in late January.The death of Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee over the weekend may add to uncertainty. While his son Jay Y. Lee is expected to take over as chairman of the group, the younger Lee still faces two trials over allegations he used bribery and accounting trickery to smooth his path to succession. The family will also have to pay billions of dollars in inheritance tax, and Samsung has so far declined to comment on how they will fund the payments.Read more: Lee’s Risk of Jail Time Complicates Samsung Succession Plans(Updates with analyst comment in fourth paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) — Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp. pledged “substantial assistance” to the U.S. in a high-profile trade-secrets prosecution of Chinese chipmaker Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co.UMC pleaded guilty Wednesday in San Francisco federal court in a deal with U.S. prosecutors, who agreed to drop serious charges of economic espionage and conspiracy for the alleged theft of proprietary information from Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc. UMC instead admitted to trade-secret theft and agreed to pay a $60 million fine.The guilty plea resolves one piece of a complicated, international prosecution of an allegedly illegal transfer of Micron’s memory design in a chip manufacturing deal between Taiwan-based UMC and Jinjiang-based Fujian Jinhua. But it also leaves key questions unanswered.The case was the first filed under the Trump administration’s “China Initiative,” a Justice Department program aimed at prioritizing trade-theft cases and litigating them as quickly as possible. With UMC removed as a defendant, China becomes the target as tension with the West is aggravated by issues including Beijing’s hacking and control of key technologies, its handling of the Covid-19 outbreak, tightening grip over Hong Kong and treatment of Muslim Uighurs.Read More: U.S. Deploys New Tactics in Prosecution of Chinese ChipmakerMicron said in a statement it will continue to seek “full restitution” from UMC in a separate, ongoing civil lawsuit. Calls to Jinhua’s general phone line went unanswered. “UMC takes full responsibility for the actions of its employees, and we are pleased to have reached an appropriate resolution regarding this matter,” the Taiwanese company said in a statement.“UMC’s guilty plea points this case towards trial against Fujian Jinhua in 2021,” said U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson. “Criminal trade secrets cases protect freedom and innovation. These cases have global significance when a foreign defendant is charged with stealing intellectual property protected by U.S. law.”Fujian Jinhua has complained that the prosecution has helped to hobble China’s aspirations of mass producing memory chips. The company has argued its very existence is at stake ever since the U.S. Commerce Department blacklisted it in 2018, blocking its ability to buy U.S. chip-making gear and cratering its production plans.Prosecutors haven’t publicly detailed the cooperation they are seeking from UMC against Fujian Jinhua, and UMC itself declined to comment on it. UMC’s plea means the Taiwan-based company is now helping in the criminal prosecution of a former Chinese business partner, potentially exacerbating tensions.Charges are still pending against three individual defendants, the former president of Fujian Jinhua and two UMC engineers. One of them, J.T. Ho, still works at UMC, according to the company. The U.S. maintains arrest warrants for all three.Neal Stephens, a lawyer for Micron, told U.S. District Judge Maxine M. Chesney that with the resolution of the criminal case against UMC, Micron will push forward with its civil trade-secrets case against the company, which had been put on hold. UMC has opposed reopening the case, Stephens said.Still unknown is how much more money UMC will ultimately pay. In addition to the U.S. fine, Micron will seek to make UMC pay restitution for the loss and damages caused by the theft. The companies agreed the sum will be argued in the civil suit because there’s a “great gulf and disparity” between what the two sides believe the value to be, said Leslie Caldwell, a lawyer for UMC.The criminal case is U.S. v. United Microelectronics Corp., 18-cr-00465; the civil suit is Micron v. United Microelectronics and Fujian Jinhua, 17-cv-06932, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (San Francisco).(Updates with Micron’s statement from the fifth paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

The arrival of 5G (fifth-generation) wireless networks is going to be a huge catalyst for Micron Technology’s (NASDAQ: MU) mobile business, as the memory capacities of smartphones running on the next-generation network are expected to increase substantially. Entry-level smartphones are already rocking 48-megapixel cameras nowadays — which demand more storage — while DRAM usage has shot up thanks to resource-intensive applications like games. Micron Technology has set its sights on this opportunity.