NEW YORK, March 19, 2026, 10:42 EDT
SanDisk shares were off roughly 1.5% at $742.50 as of 10:27 a.m. EDT Thursday, trading lower despite Citi bumping up its target. The stock started at $707.15, dipped as far as $694.44. Micron dropped close to 2.9%, while Western Digital—SanDisk’s former parent—managed a small gain, highlighting the patchy action across memory and storage stocks.
This is significant: since its February 2025 split from Western Digital, SanDisk stands out as a rare U.S.-listed play tied directly to AI-fueled flash storage demand. As data centers lean harder on NAND flash — the memory tech at the heart of SSDs — to handle mounting AI workloads, SanDisk reported a 64% sequential jump in data-center revenue for the January quarter. Sandisk
Citi’s Asiya Merchant bumped her price target on Micron up to $875 from $750, sticking with a Buy call after the company’s latest numbers. Reports from TheFly and Seeking Alpha highlighted Merchant’s take: storage demand hasn’t cooled off—she expects “NAND demand will exceed supply for the foreseeable future.” TipRanks
Micron sparked action late Wednesday after Reuters said the chipmaker topped Wall Street’s targets and projected third-quarter revenue of $33.5 billion, give or take $750 million. The company also raised its fiscal 2026 capex plan by $5 billion, taking it over $25 billion—a bump that rattled investors, even as AI-fueled demand kept pushing supply lower and prices higher. Reuters
SanDisk’s numbers spell out the rally: On Jan. 29, the company posted second-quarter revenue of $3.03 billion, a 61% jump from last year. Non-GAAP earnings hit $6.20 a share. For the current quarter, guidance came in at $4.40 billion to $4.80 billion. CEO David Goeckeler pointed to a stronger product mix, speedier enterprise SSD rollouts, and AI-driven demand as drivers for the quarter. Sandisk
Management wants to cut down on the business’s ups and downs. Back in January, Goeckeler told Reuters that major AI buyers running inference data centers — setups where stored data gets routed into chips to answer prompts — are paying up to guarantee flash shipments. “Customers prefer supply over price,” he said. SanDisk, for its part, extended its supply deal with Kioxia in Japan all the way to the end of 2034. Reuters
Valuation is shouldering more of the load now. On Wednesday, Simply Wall St pegged fair value at around $717 using an earnings-multiple method—almost matching where the stock was trading. Its discounted cash flow model, though, landed at a much loftier $1,993.28. That wide spread isn’t so much about finding a single “right” price; it highlights just how much the stock’s value swings depending on assumptions for margins, pricing, and the persistence of tight AI demand. Simply Wall St
TipRanks put Wall Street’s average price target for SanDisk at $688.33, drawn from 12 Buys and three Holds—below Wednesday’s all-time close of $753.69. Citi’s stance stands out as particularly bullish, especially in a market already eager to reward any stock linked to AI infrastructure. TipRanks
This isn’t a new risk. Memory still lives and dies by supply and demand. Micron’s recent ramp-up in factory and equipment spending is a sharp reminder: shortages don’t last, and new capacity tends to follow. Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, said the bigger spending plan just made it clearer—this business is likely to “return to its commodity nature in coming years as capacity comes online.” Reuters
