In August, Micron Technology had already had to warn investors that the revenue from the last fiscal quarter of 2022, which it reported on last night, would be below the estimated $6.8 billion. In practice, the amount involved did not exceed $6.64 billion, almost $2 billion below the market's expectations. Next year, Mikron will reduce capital spending by 30%, and it is now reducing the capacity to load production equipment.
In the annual comparison, Mikron Technology's total revenue declined by 21% to $6.64 billion, and consistently by 23%. The rate of return fell from 47.9% to 40.3% annually, and consistently fell from 47.4% to 40.3%. Income per share did not exceed $1.35 as against $2.39 a year earlier. In a presentation on the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2022, Mikron's management mentioned the main reasons for the decline in revenue.
In the last quarter, Mikron's revenues were 72% in the form of the DRAM operating memory chip, 10% in the quantity of deliveries, and 10% in the average sales price. This resulted in a 23% reduction in the DRAM sales rate, 21% in the annual comparison.
In the fourth quarter, which is already over in the Microsoft calendar, the NAND's solid memory generated about 25% of the total revenue, with its core part falling by 26% consecutively and 14% annual in comparison. The company's fourth annual revenue was determined by NAND supplies, and as a whole it increased by 11% per year. In the last quarter, the volume of solid memory supplies in kind declined by 20%-22% consecutively, while the average sales price declined by 15% to 19% consecutively.
With regard to the evolution of earnings in certain segments of the market, the Mikron management has singled out only two areas in which demand has shown a positive trend: first, the cloud market, where there is a long-term trend towards artificial intelligence systems and digitalization of the economy. In the 2022 fiscal year, Mikron's business earnings rose by more than 30%; secondly, the car market, where the records of the subsector revenues were updated, both from the quarter and from the fiscal year; in the annual comparison, the Mikron revenues in the automobile segment increased by 30%; however, even in these two areas, the company's revenue was affected by the availability of commodity surpluses to customers.
Microsoft Technology is now forced to reduce the load of existing production lines, and in the coming fiscal year is prepared to reduce capital spending by 30% to $8 billion. While the cost of purchasing production equipment will be reduced by 50% relative to the level of the past fiscal year, staff recruitment has been suspended, but existing staffing positions have not been reduced, and the cost of building production units will at least double next year, as Mikron expects demand growth in the second half of the current decade.
In the current quarter, Mikron expects to generate $4.0 billion to $4.5 billion and maintain a profit rate of between 24 and 28%. The company's management expects that the memory market will improve only by the second half of next year. This calendar year's output of the memory chip in the PC segment will reduce by 15 to 19% and in the smartphone segment by about 8 to 9%. Next year's sales of PCs are expected to remain at the current year's level or to be slightly lower, and the smartphone market in the 2023 calendar year will stabilize. If this year's growth rate of memory supplies is higher than the demand growth rate, these trends will change next year.