Micron leads semiconductors lower as new capex cuts set to come next year
sankai

Semiconductor stocks fell on Wednesday in the wake of new spending cuts from Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU), as the memory chip maker said the outlook for 2023 has continued to worsen.
Micron (MU) tumbled 5% after it said it would reduce wafer starts for both NAND and dynamics random access memory, or DRAM, by roughly 20%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. The reductions will be made across all nodes where Micron (MU) has "meaningful output," the company added.
In addition, Micron (MU) explained it is looking for additional spending cuts, as it now expects year-over-year bit supply growth to be negative for DRAM and just single-digit percentage for NAND.
"Micron is taking bold and aggressive steps to reduce bit supply growth to limit the size of our inventory," CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement. "We will continue to monitor industry conditions and make further adjustments as needed." 
Following the cut, Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson said the ongoing deterioration in the memory market is "current understood," but it's a question of how and when the bottom is found, with the outlook for consumer electronic devices, content per device and memory output fuzzy.
"On this front, we continue to struggle to pick an exact bottom for industry fundamentals (whether a pricing floor or demand catching up to supply)," Bryson explained.
Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX) dipped 3.8% following the news, while competitor Western Digital (WDC) fell 5.5%.
Separately on Wednesday, investment firm Susquehanna trimmed its estimates on Seagate Technology (STX) after the company's recent debt exchange.
Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) fell 4%, giving back some recent gains, even as the company said Japan's automotive supply company Aisin Corp, had picked the company's processor to power a new system to help cars park themselves.
"Aisin's solution is designed to make this more mainstream, because the solution itself is designed to fit into a very cost effective module," Wayne Lyons, AMDâs senior director for the automotive market said in an interview with Reuters.
Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), which is slated to report third-quarter results after the close of trading, declined 2.8% despite Credit Suisse initiating coverage on it and several other chip stocks with overweight ratings. 
Regarding Nvidia (NVDA), analyst Chris Caso said the company's long-term growth in artificial intelligence, a de-risked gaming business, continued gains from its Grace and Hopper platforms and "optionality from software" provide a positive outlook on the Jensen Huang-led Nvidia (NVDA).
The investment firm also started covering AMD (AMD), Marvell Technology (MRVL), Qualcomm (QCOM), Skyworks Solutions (SWKS), Qorvo (QRVO) and several others.
Qorvo (QRVO) and Marvell (MRVL) fell 5%, while Qualcomm (QCOM) and Skyworks dropped at least 3% in mid-day trading.
Also seeing losses on Wednesday were notable names such as Intel (INTC), Broadcom (AVGO), Texas Instruments (TXN), Analog Devices (ADI) and ON Semiconductor (ON), all of which lost 2% or more.
Earlier this week, it was reported that hedge fund Baupost Group had increased its stake in Micron Technology (MU) in the third quarter, while making several other changes to its portfolio.