Forget next year. The tech downtrend may be in danger of leaking into 2024

Published Thu, Dec 22 20228:55 AM ESTUpdated Thu, Dec 22 20229:20 AM EST

Tough time for tech. Weak outlook, reduced estimates, significant oversupply. Looking for an imminent bottom in global tech demand is proving very elusive, at least if you look at Micron's earnings report. Analysts — normally a glass-half-full group if there ever was one — are not even trying to be optimistic. And they seem to be worried this may go on longer than they anticipated. "It's ugly," Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers wrote, starting off his summary of Micron's earnings. "These are the most challenging conditions for the memory market since the financial crisis," Chris Caso at Credit Suisse said, after he looked over Micron's numbers. Micron's results "reflect an overall worsening of the demand environment across most end-markets (most notably Data Centers), with weaker pricing trends as the primary driver to the sequential revenue decline," Deutsche Bank analyst Sidney Ho said. It doesn't stop there: it was a variation on demand and supply imbalance. "Losses mount over significant oversupply," Joseph Moore at Morgan Stanley said. "In a rapidly deteriorating memory environment driven by inventory corrections/demand weakness across nearly every end market, pricing continues to be the biggest headwind to memory profitability/earnings," Harlan Sur at JPMorgan warned. "Margin pressure mounts as demand continues to weaken," Vivek Arya at BofA Securities said. "We acknowledge that Micron, along with its industry peers, will need to demonstrate sustained and consistent supply-side discipline for pricing to improve in 2H CY23 and for investors to once again believe that memory industry margins and FCF can grow on a through-cycle basis," Toshiya Hari at Goldman Sachs said. The market has been aware of this bad news all year. Jonathan Krinsky, a market technician at BTIG, noted that "the Nasdaq Composite has closed below its 200-DMA for 235 consecutive trading days. That is the longest streak since 2001 (308 days), and the fourth longest in its history back to 1971. That is a strong downtrend." The bottom line: where's the bottom? Looking at the key takeaway (cutting demand and lower spending outlook) Tom O'Malley at Barclays concluded: "We see the headline here as a major downtick for the Semi Cap equipment group." O'Malley, like everyone else, loves buying at demand troughs, but he's not sure where exactly this one is: "The correction is now leaking into FY24," he says.