The market value of the DRAM and NAND memory chip specialist, in oligopoly with Samsung and SK Hynix, has fallen by a third since the peak of the speculative euphoria that gripped the semiconductor sector during the pandemic.

The fall is brutal, but softer than the operational reality: Micron, which published its annual results yesterday, recorded a 49% drop in sales compared to the previous year.

From an operating profit of $9.7 billion, the company recorded a dry loss of $5.7 billion in just twelve months. Another cause for concern is that, despite this free-fall in activity, net debt is doubling and inventories are piling up on the balance sheet.

Strangely, these worrying developments have not prevented the Group from returning $929 million to its shareholders via dividends and share buy-backs. There is undoubtedly reason to question the wisdom of such a decision.

Sometimes compared to a "royalty on e-commerce and streaming" on the grounds that almost a third of the total investment in a new data center is devoted to memory equipment - an element which, incidentally, is not always the case. Micron had become a veritable "hedge fund hotel".

We all know how this type of boom usually ends, and how it's always wiser to consider long-term trends, even secular ones, rather than short-term conjunctures. For beyond the well-spoken adages, the fundamental law of the financial markets remains that of the inevitable return to the mean.