2007 Letter to Shareholders

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Letter to Shareholders

To our Shareholders,

We look back at fiscal 2007 with mixed feelings. We started the year with good results, but ended it surrounded by an industry downturn. Significant progress was made in our operations, but we were not able to reduce costs sufficiently to offset one of the steepest market declines in recent history. Although the current market environment remains challenging, we believe our core initiatives around innovation and execution will enable the Company to achieve its goal of market leadership.

Appleton and DurcanIn fiscal 2007, we accomplished many of our objectives directed at better positioning the Company for the future. For the first time in our history we achieved revenue growth for the fifth consecutive year, reaching a level that was second only to the tech bubble of 2000. We introduced the world’s first 1-Gb DDR3 memory chip. We led the CMOS Imager market in both revenue and units. We released our multi-level-cell NAND Flash memory chip built on the 50-nanometer process and began production at a new facility in Utah.

The Company also embarked on new and meaningful initiatives to drive an improved cost structure with the goal of returning to a position of being the lowest-cost provider of memory products in the industry. These efforts include cost reductions in R&D, SG&A and manufacturing. In addition, we began an effort to implement a flexible and variable cost model that is more aligned with the fluctuations in the volatile memory market.

We also assisted the communities where our employees live and work. The Micron Technology Foundation provided significant funds to spark the passion for math and science education and to support facilities and programs for engineering and semiconductor research. And, we hosted the President of the United States, who recognized the Company for its innovation and entrepreneurial spirit.

As we look toward our 30th anniversary in 2008, we will focus on several key elements:

  • Achieving profitability.
  • Ensuring that our recent investments bear fruit.
  • Simplifying our business model and adopting a more flexible expense approach that allows our operating expenses to be more variable as well as equal to or better than our competition.
  • Continuing to optimize our operations to achieve industry leading manufacturing cost reduction.
  • Meeting the needs of existing markets while focusing design and development efforts on next-generation products.

These objectives, in combination with utilizing our worldwide facilities, technology leadership, customer knowledge and the most talented team in the semiconductor industry, will build on the foundation established 30 years ago. We thank our shareholders, customers, team members and partners for their support in our past successes and future accomplishments.

Steve Appleton
Steve Appleton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Mark Durcan
Mark Durcan, President and Chief Operating Officer

PDF 2007 Annual Report on Form 10-K
PDF 2007 Proxy Statement

2007 Shareholders' Meeting

Micron's annual shareholders' meeting was held December 4, 2007.