Flash memory chip maker Micron Technology Inc. posted big gains in its latest earnings report Thursday and said it’s planning to spend some of its cash to build new production facilities.

The company reported a profit after certain costs such as stock compensation of $2.82 per share on revenue of $7.35 billion in its fiscal second quarter, up from $4.65 billion revenue in the same period one year ago. Wall Street was expecting an adjusted profit of $2.71 per share on revenue of $7.25 billion, Bloomberg reported.

But investors look to be more concerned by the company’s admission that an issue at one of its Taiwan-based manufacturing plants had forced it to halt production there. As a result, the company said, it could see production take a hit in the third quarter, bringing down revenue by about 2 percent. However, Micron’s forecast for the current quarter still surpasses Wall Street’s estimates after taking into account the expected shortfall.

Micron Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mehrotra said in a conference call the company is hoping to address supply constraints by building a new clean room, or chip manufacturing space, in its facilities in Singapore and in Hiroshima, Japan. The new facilities should both begin production by 2019, Mehrotra said.

But the spending commitments and production problems seemed to weigh heavily on investors’ minds, as Micron’s share price fell by about 3.5 percent in after-hours trading. Still, that’s barely a dent in a company that’s seen its stock rise 126 percent in the past 12 months.

Micron, which competes against Japan’s Toshiba Corp. in the flash memory market, and against Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. in dynamic random-access memory or DRAM chips for computers, is benefiting from increased demand for its chips, which are used in everything from computer storage drives to home appliances and supercomputers.

The growing demand has helped the company to head off fears of a supply glut that has caused its markets to crash in the past. However, investors may still be concerned about whether Micron can keep up its rapid pace of growth.

“The investment environment is not following rational traits at the moment,” said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research Inc. “Predictable performance over a string of quarters will still be good for stock price growth. However, there are too many intangibles right now, with  trade wars, sanctions and tax reform all looming.”

Sensing these concerns, Mehrotra said in the conference call that data center demand will keep driving growth regardless of prices, as enterprises are still gathering ever-growing amounts of data to serve the needs of their customers, particularly in the retail sector.

“All of that requires … real-time AI applications, which means lot of data that has been processed fast, which means, again, it needs more DRAM memory,” Mehrotra said.

As if to emphasize that point, and even with its production problems in Taiwan, Micron issued a third-quarter forecast that topped analysts’ estimates. The company said it expects to see an adjusted profit of $2.76 to $2.90 per share on revenue of $7.2 billion to $7.6 billion. Wall Street had forecast a $2.64-per-share profit on revenue of $7.29 billion.

Image: Micron