SanDisk's Record Quarter Meets a Wall Street That's Asking the Wrong Question
Published on 08/10/2026 at 15:03 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
There's a peculiar moment in every red-hot growth cycle when the numbers get better and the stock gets worse. SanDisk is living through that moment right now, and the disconnect has become almost impossible to ignore.
The company just reported what it calls its strongest quarter in recent history — revenue up 51% sequentially, earnings blowing past analyst estimates, and a data-center business growing at a pace that would make most semiconductor executives blush. The stock's response? A 4.55% drop on Friday to 1,050.00 euros, extending a 30-day slide that has now wiped out roughly 37% of the share price. At 1,060.00 euros, the stock sits nearly half below its 52-week high, with 48.54% of recovery needed just to get back to that level.
The numbers are spectacular. That's the problem.
For the fourth fiscal quarter of 2026, SanDisk posted revenue of $8.97 billion, up 51% from the prior quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $39.25, comfortably ahead of the $34.59 consensus. On a GAAP basis, net income reached $6.90 billion, or $43.97 per share. For the full fiscal year, revenue surged 175% to $20.25 billion, with net income of $11.43 billion. The data-center business — the crown jewel of the AI storage narrative — grew 437%.
Here's the detail that matters most: two-thirds of the sequential growth came from higher prices, only one-third from higher volumes. That's the tell. The NAND cycle is running almost entirely on pricing power right now, and investors have started to wonder what happens when that pricing power fades.
The company's own guidance for the first fiscal quarter of 2027 — revenue between $10.30 billion and $10.80 billion, non-GAAP EPS of $44.00 to $46.00 — is operationally strong but shows a visible deceleration in momentum. More tellingly, SanDisk flagged only moderate price increases for the September quarter, a marked slowdown from the price surges of the past twelve months.
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That single sentence in the guidance may have done more damage to the stock than any of the record numbers could repair.
Wall Street splits into two camps
The analyst reaction in the days following the report reads less like a consensus and more like a philosophical debate about the durability of the NAND cycle.
Jefferies' Blayne Curtis cut his price target from 3,000 to 1,750 dollars — a dramatic reduction of more than 40% — while keeping his Buy rating intact. His reasoning centers on the weakening NAND pricing dynamics. Evercore ISI's Amit Daryanani trimmed his target from 3,100 to 2,800 dollars, also maintaining a positive stance. Mizuho went from 2,200 to 1,900, Citi from 2,500 to 2,100, and Wells Fargo from 1,620 to 1,400.
On the other side of the ledger, Morgan Stanley reaffirmed its Overweight rating and 1,750-dollar target, arguing that NAND demand remains robust despite the cautious outlook. Wedbush held firm at Outperform with a 2,000-dollar target. RBC Capital was the lone contrarian mover, actually raising its target from 1,000 to 1,300 dollars.
The spread between the lowest and highest targets is enormous — roughly 1,400 to 2,800 dollars. That kind of dispersion doesn't happen when the fundamentals are clear. It happens when the market is genuinely uncertain whether the AI storage boom is a structural shift or a cyclical peak that's about to roll over.
Management is betting big on its own story
While the analyst community wrestles with pricing forecasts, SanDisk's board has put its money where its mouth is. The company authorized an additional $14 billion buyback program, bringing total remaining repurchase capacity to $15.5 billion — a clear signal that management considers the current share price an attractive entry point.
The company also continues to expand its new business model, announcing five additional agreements since the program's launch in April. That brings the total to ten — three with new customers and two expansions of existing partnerships. These long-term supply agreements are exactly the kind of contractual support that Wedbush points to as a stabilizing force for prices and margins.
On the technology front, SanDisk and Japanese partner Kioxia have begun production of the tenth generation of 3D flash memory at the Kitakami facility, and extended their joint NAND manufacturing framework agreement through December 2034. Management used the Future of Memory and Storage conference to argue that NAND is the "versatile and scalable foundation" of the AI era.
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Not everything is perfectly aligned, though. Media reports indicate that company insiders sold $10.9 million worth of shares over the past three months, with no insider purchases recorded. That's not necessarily a red flag, but it sits awkwardly alongside a $14 billion buyback announcement.
The August 13 test
All of this sets up what could be the defining moment for the stock: SanDisk's investor day, scheduled for August 13. CEO David Goeckeler and CFO Luis Visoso are expected to lay out details on High Bandwidth Flash, an updated technology roadmap, and the company's long-term view of the AI storage opportunity.
For a stock that has lost nearly 37% in a month despite record operational performance, that presentation will determine whether the current weakness is a pause or the beginning of a longer re-rating. The market has already priced in skepticism about the sustainability of price increases. What it hasn't priced in — yet — is a convincing argument that the boom is more than a cycle.
The operative question isn't whether SanDisk's business is broken. The record revenue, expanding customer agreements, and aggressive buyback program all argue against that. The real question is whether the market's patience for a pricing-driven growth story has run out before management can prove the next chapter is real.
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