Micron Technology has unveiled plans to idle up to 5% of DRAM wafer starts and also reduce its total NAND flash wafer starts by 5% in 2019, while expressing caution about sales performance in its third quarter of fiscal 2019.

Oversupply in both DRAM and NAND flash sectors led to an over 20% fall in Micron's product ASPs during the quarter ended February 28, 2019. The company saw its revenues decline 26% sequentially and 21% on year to US$5.8 billion in its fiscal second-quarter 2019, citing "worse-than-expected DRAM and NAND pricing."

Micron saw its DRAM revenues decrease 30% sequentially and 28% from a year earlier to account for 64% of its total revenues in the second quarter of its fiscal 2019. The company's DRAM ASPs fell 21-23% on quarter, while bit shipments were down by a low double-digit percentage.

Micron's NAND revenues slipped 18% sequentially and 2% on year to account for 30% of company revenues in the fiscal second-quarter 2019. ASPs went down about 25% from the first quarter, but bit shipments increased by a high single-digit percentage, the company disclosed.

Looking into the fiscal third-quarter 2019, Micron expects revenues to register another sequential drop of about 17% to US$4.6-5 billion, with gross margin sliding to 37-40% from 50% in the prior quarter.

"Micron continues to execute well across a range of product, operational and financial initiatives against the backdrop of a challenging market environment," said Micron president and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra. "These initiatives and our focus on high-value solutions, cost competitiveness and innovation will enable us to emerge even stronger as the market environment improves."