NEW YORK/FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - A premarket rally at Micron following a strong quarterly outlook had a positive impact on chip stocks internationally on Thursday. While the US chip giant's shares shot up 17.7 percent in out-of-hours trading, heading for a record high, European sector stocks Infineon and STMicroelectronics rose by up to 2.9 percent.

The tech sector was also generally supported by the monetary policy signals from the US Federal Reserve. In Europe, its sub-index led the sector ranking.

The Fed continues to hold out the prospect of three interest rate cuts this year. Contrary to the expectations of some market players, the monetary authorities have not reduced the number of planned interest rate cuts, the experts at Postbank emphasized positively. Due to the need for investment, the tech sector is considered to be particularly dependent on interest rates.

Micron announced sales targets for the current quarter after the close of trading the previous evening, which surprised the market positively. The reason for this was demand related to artificial intelligence (AI). The company is forecasting turnover of between 6.4 and 6.8 billion US dollars for the third quarter. This compares with an average analyst estimate of just under 6 billion.

Timothy Arcuri of Swiss bank UBS emphasized that Micron had struck exactly the right note - also with regard to pricing and the durability of this cycle. "We have been saying for a long time that the peak will only come when the gross margin reaches it," said the expert. This is unlikely until well into 2025. He emphasized that the share, which has a "buy" rating, remains one of his top ideas. He raised the price target slightly to 125 dollars. The share price is only getting closer to this level with the previous jump to just over 113 dollars.

According to one trader, Micron's statements are a sign that the situation on the memory market is improving. The shares of memory manufacturers Western Digital and Seagate also benefited from this in pre-market US trading, gaining six and two percent respectively.

The trader added that an increase in investment in 2025 signaled by Micron was also positive for equipment manufacturers and suppliers, provided they could be associated with the storage and AI business. This led to a pre-market rise of three percent in the shares of equipment manufacturer Applied Materials. In Europe, ASML shares benefited, gaining 4.5 percent./tih/ck/jha/