Micron shares plummet amid reports of China sales ban

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Shares in US chipmaker Micron Technology Inc plummeted on Tuesday, after a Chinese court reportedly issued a temporary injunction against the company banning it from selling chips in China.

The Nasdaq-listed company saw its share price fall by as much as eight percent, before ending Tuesday trading 5.5 percent down.

The stock rout came after Taiwan-based rival United Microelectronic Corporation (UMC) released a statement, claiming the Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court in east China has issued a temporary ban on the sale of 26 Micron products, including dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) products and hard drives.

Micron responded by saying that it had not received an injunction from the Fuzhou court, and would not make any further comments until it was contacted.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang, when asked by reporters at a regular briefing on Tuesday, said this was “an individual case about intellectual property rights protection” and that he did not think there was an “inevitable connection” between this case and current China-US trade tensions.

UMC has previously accused Micron of violating its intellectual property rights in China, with the company’s statement quoting its president Jason Wang as saying “UMC is pleased with today's decision. UMC invests heavily in its intellectual property and aggressively pursues any company that infringes UMC's patents.”

Last month, Micron confirmed that it was being investigated by China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, amid media speculation that it was being probed over antitrust violations.

According to Bloomberg, around 50 percent of Micron’s sales come from China. The company raked in revenue of 20.32 billion US dollars in the 2017 fiscal year, and revenue in the most recent quarter was up 40 percent year on year to 7.80 billion US dollars.

The Idaho-based company employs over 34,000 people, and is the world’s third-largest manufacturer of DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) semiconductor technology, a key component of digital electronics.