SpaceX or Micron: If I Could Only Own One for the Next 5 Years, It Would Be This

If I were forced to pick only one of these two stocks to own for the next five years, I'd take Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) over SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), and not because I doubt what SpaceX has built. Rockets that can land themselves safely for reuse and a satellite internet business with real revenue are genuinely remarkable achievements. My hesitation is about the stock and the man behind it, not the rockets.

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Why I'd pass on SpaceX

SpaceX went public in June at $135 per share, first traded at $150, and popped as high as roughly $226 in the days that followed. Then it tumbled to a low of around $105 and has since round-tripped back to around $134 to $140 in recent sessions, close to 40% below its peak.

That's not a company failing; Starlink reported 13.6 million subscribers last quarter with revenue per user climbing to $69, and the company's Starship rocket finally reached orbit for the first time in September. It's a stock that's already proven it can swing nearly in half within months, and I don't love buying into that kind of volatility for a five-year hold.

The bigger issue for me is control. SpaceX's IPO filing spelled out the nature of a dual-class share structure in which Musk's Class B shares carry 10 votes each, while the Class A shares that regular investors can actually buy carry just one vote each. The result: Musk holds around 82% of the voting power while owning less than half the economic stake in the company. As a shareholder, you're along for the ride, not in the driver's seat, and that ride includes a CEO who's also running Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), X, xAI, and a handful of other ventures simultaneously. I don't think that makes SpaceX a bad business. I think it makes it a harder stock to hold for five years, given how tied it will be to wherever Musk's attention goes next.

What Micron is actually doing

Micron just closed its best fiscal year ever. Its fiscal 2026 revenue came in at $133.19 billion, up from $37.38 billion the year before, and the fourth quarter alone brought in a record $54.23 billion. In the company's Sept. 30 earnings release, CEO Sanjay Mehrotra framed it plainly: "AI is becoming Super Intelligence (SI), and memory enhances this intelligence and the competitiveness of our customers' platforms." Micron also guided for roughly $61.5 billion in revenue for its current quarter, which would be another record.

What I find more convincing than the revenue number is how Micron is locking that sales growth in. The company has signed 16 strategic customer agreements -- multiyear take-or-pay contracts with price floors that bind customers to purchase set volumes of memory whether they need it in the moment or not. Management says those agreements carry a cumulative minimum revenue value of roughly $100 billion, and customers have already put up about $22 billion in cash deposits and related financial commitments to back them. That's not Micron hoping demand holds up; that's customers prepaying to guarantee they get supply at all. Micron also pays a dividend of $0.15 per share quarterly, something SpaceX doesn't offer its shareholders in any form.

The verdict

Both companies are riding real, durable trends; demand for space infrastructure isn't going away, and neither is demand for AI data center memory. But one of these stocks comes with a CEO who controls the board regardless of what public shareholders think and a chart that has already demonstrated how violently it can move, while the other just posted contracted revenue visibility stretching years into the future, backed by customers putting real cash on the table.

Over the next five years, I'd rather own the business with its hand already forced by binding contracts than the one where a single person's attention, mood, or next venture can move the stock overnight. Micron wins that comparison for me, not really because SpaceX is a bad company, but because it's a much harder stock to hold on to.

Micah Zimmerman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Micron Technology and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.