Micron Just Raised Its Buyback Authorization to $35 Billion. Prediction: It Spends More Buying Back Stock in the Next Year Than in the Past 8 Combined.

MU raised its stock buyback authorization to $35.16 billion, more than four times the $7.84 billion it spent on repurchases across the past eight fiscal years combined.

The firepower comes from cash generation. Micron posted $33.2 billion in free cash flow in Q4 fiscal 2026, the figure underpinning the expanded program.

There are two brakes on the story. First, CHIPS Act restrictions limit buybacks until December 2026, so the authorization can't be deployed at full speed immediately. Second, the share price works against the math: with MU trading near $985, the full authorization would retire only about 3% of outstanding shares.

Dilution compounds the problem. Employee stock awards add roughly 11 million shares annually, which offsets part of what repurchases remove. Interpretation: the headline number looks large against MU's own buyback history, but net share count reduction will be modest at current prices, so the program functions more as a capital-return signal than a major per-share earnings driver.