Kioxia Shares Plunge Nearly 16 Percent After December Quarter Guidance Misses Consensus

Shares of Japanese memory chip maker Kioxia Holdings plunged 15.8 percent in Tokyo on Monday after the company issued a cautious outlook for the December quarter that fell well below what analysts expected.

TradingView News reported the 15.8 percent fall on November 2, 2026, and The Wall Street Journal, in its stocks to watch coverage the same day, also reported that Kioxia shares fell 16 percent after its quarterly profit missed analysts expectations. Finnhub market data for Kioxia, listed as 285A.T, showed the shares closing at 11,345 yen, down 15.78 percent from a previous close of 13,470 yen.

Guidance that missed the market by 15 percent

Kioxia projected operating profit of about 2 trillion yen for the October to December 2026 quarter. That is only slightly above the September quarter figure of 1.99 trillion yen, and about 15 percent below the market consensus of about 2.35 trillion yen.

The revenue outlook was nearly flat as well. Kioxia forecast December quarter revenue of about 2.5 trillion yen, up only about 1 percent from the September quarter. September quarter revenue reached 2.48 trillion yen, up 453.2 percent year over year, with adjusted operating profit of 1.9883 trillion yen. Against growth that strong, a flat quarter read to investors as a sharp slowdown.

Shipment timing sits behind the flat outlook

The company attributed the flat guidance in part to shipment timing. Some customer orders were recognised early in the September quarter at customer request, which lifted the September numbers. Other enterprise storage orders were pushed into the March 2027 quarter because of longer production cycles, which held the December quarter outlook down.

That explanation did not stop the selling. The size of the gap between the company outlook and the consensus, a difference of about 0.35 trillion yen on operating profit, was what traders focused on in the Monday session.

The selloff drags the Nikkei, but not US memory stocks

The selloff revived concern that AI driven storage demand growth may be cooling. Kioxia dragged the Nikkei 225, which fell 0.33 percent to close at 63,082 on Monday. Screen Holdings also tumbled 19 percent in the same session after keeping its full year guidance unchanged despite record order intake.

US memory stocks did not follow Kioxia down in pre market trading on November 2. Micron rose over 2 percent, SanDisk gained over 3 percent and SK Hynix climbed nearly 5 percent, according to TradingKey. That split left the Monday move looking, for now, like a company specific reaction to one outlook in Tokyo rather than a sector wide break in memory shares.

For investors in AI hardware supply chains, the next test is the March 2027 quarter, the period the company says will receive the enterprise storage orders that slipped out of the December quarter. If those orders land on the new schedule, Monday's fall will have priced in a timing gap. If they slip again, the cooling concern raised on Monday will be harder to dismiss.