Sandisk (SNDK) Stock Today: S&P 500 Newcomer Slides After 500% AI Rally

Published: December 3, 2025

Sandisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) has been one of 2025’s hottest technology names, riding the artificial intelligence (AI) storage boom from a low-$30s spin‑off price to a place in the S&P 500 and a gain of more than 400% year to date. That spectacular run is now meeting a bout of heavy profit‑taking: Sandisk shares are down sharply this week even as Wall Street’s longer‑term forecasts remain broadly bullish. ^[1]

This article walks through what’s happening to Sandisk stock today, why the flash‑memory cycle is so important, and how analysts currently see SNDK’s upside and risks going into 2026.

Sandisk Stock Today: Sharp Pullback After a Historic Run

By early afternoon U.S. trading on December 3, 2025, Sandisk stock was hovering around $191–192, down roughly 6–7% on the day, with intraday lows just below $189. That puts the company’s market capitalization near $28–30 billion, versus a 52‑week range of roughly $28 to $285 per share. ^[2]

Screeners tracking gap moves show SNDK among the S&P 500’s biggest decliners today, with ChartMill flagging a 6.4% drop to about $192 and a downside gap of more than 12%. ^[3] GuruFocus similarly notes a 7.7% single‑day slide, attributing the move to a mix of market volatility and company‑specific factors after an extended rally. ^[4]

Even after this week’s pressure, the context is crucial:

Sandisk is still up more than 400–450% in 2025 since its February spin‑off from Western Digital. ^[5]
The stock has fallen roughly 14% this week and is now about one‑third below its all‑time intraday high set on November 12, 2025. ^[6]
Despite recent selling, Sandisk remains one of the year’s best‑performing large‑cap tech names, outpacing even its former parent Western Digital (WDC). ^[7]

In other words, today’s drop looks less like a broken story and more like a violent shake‑out after an extreme AI‑driven momentum run.

From Western Digital Spinoff to S&P 500 Entrant

Sandisk’s 2025 stock story starts with corporate surgery at Western Digital.

On February 24, 2025, Western Digital completed the long‑planned separation of its flash business, creating an independent Sandisk Corporation focused on NAND flash and solid‑state storage. ^[8]
Western Digital shareholders received one‑third of a Sandisk share (SNDK) for every WDC share they owned, and Sandisk began regular Nasdaq trading around $50 per share. ^[9]
Over the following months, SNDK rocketed higher as investors repositioned into pure‑play AI infrastructure companies.

That momentum culminated in Sandisk’s addition to the S&P 500 index, effective before the open on November 28, 2025, replacing Interpublic Group after its merger with Omnicom. ^[10]

Index‑tracking funds were forced buyers, and coverage from CNBC, MarketWatch, Investopedia and others highlighted that Sandisk was one of just a dozen companies admitted to the S&P 500 this year and had soared more than 500% since the spin‑off. ^[11]

Simply Wall St notes that Sandisk was simultaneously added to the S&P 500 Information Technology, S&P 500 Equal Weight, and S&P Global 1200 indices, while exiting several small‑ and mid‑cap benchmarks — a rapid migration that underlines how quickly the market now treats Sandisk as a mainstream large‑cap tech name. ^[12]

Fundamentals: Earnings Turnaround and AI‑Driven Growth

Beneath the wild price action, Sandisk’s fundamentals have been inflecting off the bottom of the memory cycle.

Full‑year 2025 picture

StockAnalysis data show that for fiscal 2025 Sandisk generated roughly $7.36 billion in revenue, up about 10% from 2024, but still posted a GAAP net loss of around $1.6–1.7 billion as pricing only recently started to recover. ^[13]

In a Q4 2025 release, Sandisk reported: ^[14]

Q4 revenue of $1.90 billion, up 12% sequentially
A small GAAP loss of $23 million
Non‑GAAP EPS of $0.29, signaling an earnings recovery
Q1 FY26 revenue guidance of $2.10–2.20 billion, already implying a double‑digit sequential lift

Q1 FY26: the AI upcycle kicks in

The next quarter, fiscal Q1 2026, showed how fast the cycle is turning:

Revenue jumped to about $2.3 billion, up 21% sequentially and 23% year over year, driven by data‑center and edge‑computing demand. ^[15]
Non‑GAAP gross margin expanded to roughly 29.9%, up 3.5 percentage points sequentially. ^[16]
Management guided Q2 2026 revenue to $2.55–2.65 billion and projected non‑GAAP gross margins in the 41–43% range, signaling confidence in sustained pricing power. ^[17]

Investors and analysts have zeroed in on the mix shift: data‑center revenue has grown rapidly and now represents a rising share of total sales as AI workloads migrate to faster, denser flash storage. ^[18]

NAND Shortage, Price Hikes and Why They Matter for SNDK

Sandisk’s earnings rebound is tightly linked to a global NAND flash shortage.

TrendForce expects NAND demand to grow 20–22% year over year in 2026, while supply grows only 15–17%, implying a widening supply‑demand gap. ^[19]
Industry research pegs the global NAND flash memory market at about $68.3 billion in 2024, projected to reach $181.8 billion by 2032, a 13% CAGR from 2025 onward. ^[20]

On the pricing side:

Industrial NAND specialists note that NAND wafer contract prices rose 10–15% in October 2025 as suppliers cut older‑node output and prioritized higher‑margin products. ^[21]
Tom’s Hardware reports that in November 2025, NAND wafer contract prices surged by more than 60%, with 512Gb and 1Tb TLC NAND prices up over 65% as hyperscalers locked in capacity for AI data centers. ^[22]

Sandisk is not just passively benefiting from this tight market — it’s helping drive it. A recent AInvest analysis highlights that the company raised its own NAND flash prices by roughly 50% in November 2025, its third price hike this year, in response to supply shortages and strong AI‑related demand. ^[23]

That strategy, combined with next‑generation BiCS8/10th‑gen 3D NAND co‑developed with Kioxia and a new High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) collaboration with SK hynix, underpins a thesis that Sandisk can capture a significant share of what some analysts see as a $1 trillion AI infrastructure build‑out by 2030. ^[24]

The flip side is obvious: if the NAND cycle turns faster than expected, these same price hikes could amplify downside volatility.

What Wall Street Says: Ratings, Targets and Sentiment

Despite the recent pullback, most sell‑side firms remain constructive on SNDK.

Consensus ratings

StockAnalysis aggregates 13 analysts and shows an overall “Strong Buy” rating with an average 12‑month price target of about $218, roughly 14% upside from today’s price. ^[25]
MarketBeat lists 21 analysts with an average target around $193.9 and a range from $32 to $300, implying modest upside from a recent price near $192 but a very wide dispersion of views. ^[26]
Investing.com’s consensus from 17 analysts pegs the average target closer to $260, with a high estimate of $314 and a low of $135, rating the stock a “Buy”. ^[27]

In broad strokes, that set of targets implies that:

Conservative estimates see little near‑term upside after the 2025 melt‑up.
More aggressive houses still see 30–35% upside over the next year if the NAND upcycle persists.

Recent upgrades and target hikes

Jefferies recently raised its Sandisk price target to $250, citing favorable pricing and a tight supply backdrop. ^[28]
Bank of America earlier more than doubled its target from $59 to $125 as the AI storage thesis gained traction. ^[29]
Longbridge coverage notes Goldman Sachs doubling its target as well, explicitly tying the call to NAND shortages and improving margins. ^[30]

Zacks has repeatedly highlighted SNDK as a “Bull of the Day”, emphasizing momentum, improving profitability and strong Style Scores for growth and momentum, albeit with a weaker value score after the rally. ^[31]

Quant and Technical Models: Volatility Front and Center

Algorithmic and technical‑analysis platforms largely agree on two things: volatility is extreme, and the trend is still up, albeit fragile.

TradingView lists Sandisk’s beta around 2.3 and daily volatility near 9%, noting an all‑time high of about $284.76 on November 12 and an all‑time low near $27.89 in April 2025. ^[32]
CoinCodex’s model, updated December 3, expects SNDK to rise about 13% to roughly $232 by January 1, 2026, but flags a “Bearish” short‑term sentiment, a Fear & Greed Index reading of 39 (Fear), and large swings (roughly 15–16% volatility over the last month). ^[33]
StockInvest.us classifies Sandisk as a “Buy or Hold” candidate after a 420% gain since mid‑August, while warning that the recent flat trading at elevated levels makes it vulnerable to sudden corrections. ^[34]
TradersUnion’s long‑range scenario goes much further, projecting SNDK could reach about $291 by the end of 2025 and potentially quadruple again by 2029 — a highly speculative path that assumes a very strong and prolonged cycle. ^[35]

These models are useful for framing risk but are not guarantees. They mainly underscore that Sandisk is a high‑beta, high‑uncertainty way to bet on AI storage rather than a steady compounder.

Fresh Commentary on December 3: Index Hangover and Pullback Narratives

Today’s moves come against a swirl of new commentary.

Investopedia’s “Dow Jones Today” column notes that Sandisk, the newest S&P 500 member, is down about 14% this week and now trades roughly one‑third below its November high, after nearly 4% gains on its first day in the index. ^[36]
Simply Wall St asks whether S&P 500 inclusion and AI NAND demand fundamentally change the bull case, pointing out that Sandisk’s rapid migration into large‑cap indices reflects both its size and the market’s expectation that AI storage demand will stay elevated. ^[37]
GuruFocus’ piece today frames the 7–8% daily drop as a combination of broad‑market volatility and company‑specific concerns, while still describing Sandisk as a financially robust NAND leader with a strong balance sheet. ^[38]
ChartMill highlights SNDK as a notable gap‑down stock in the S&P 500, yet also notes it remains roughly 200% above its level three months ago. ^[39]

Alongside those, a UBS Global Technology & AI Conference appearance on December 2 keeps Sandisk in front of institutional investors, with a full transcript published on Seeking Alpha. ^[40] Recent Seeking Alpha articles carry titles like “Big Pullback Offers Fresh Entry Point” and “A Little Correction Is Healthy”, reflecting the emerging narrative that the AI winner is correcting but not yet broken. ^[41]

Key Catalysts for Sandisk Stock in 2026

Looking beyond this week’s turbulence, several catalysts could move SNDK over the next 12–18 months:

Next earnings reports
Sandisk’s next scheduled earnings release is expected around late February 2026 (Q2 FY26). Guidance for revenue, gross margin and data‑center mix will be scrutinized, especially after management’s ambitious 41–43% margin target. ^[42]
NAND price trajectory
If TrendForce’s forecast of double‑digit NAND price increases in early 2026 plays out, Sandisk could see further margin expansion. Conversely, any hint that hyperscalers are pausing orders or that supply is normalizing faster than expected could hit the stock hard. ^[43]
Adoption of HBF and next‑gen 3D NAND
The success of High Bandwidth Flash with SK hynix and 300‑plus‑layer 3D NAND with Kioxia will determine whether Sandisk can sustain a performance and cost edge in AI data‑center SSDs. ^[44]
Competition and capacity decisions
Moves by Samsung, Micron, Kioxia, SK hynix and others to ramp or cut capacity will shape the cycle. As the cycle matures, Sandisk will need to prove it can grow bits shipped and maintain pricing discipline simultaneously. ^[45]
Macro and AI‑capex trends
Many of the more bullish forecasts assume trillions in cumulative AI‑data‑center capex by 2030; any slowdown in AI investment, or policy‑driven changes in data‑center build‑out, would ripple directly into NAND demand. ^[46]

Risks: Cycles, Valuation and Execution

For all its promise, Sandisk is not a low‑risk story.

Cyclical earnings: NAND is among the most cyclical parts of semiconductors. Past cycles show that when supply catches up, prices can fall quickly, compressing margins and flipping profits back to losses. Recent commentary on the NAND market cycle for industrial customers suggests the current upturn may already be sharper than many expected. ^[47]
Valuation vs. fundamentals: On trailing numbers, Sandisk still reports GAAP losses and trades at a stretched multiple of current earnings; the bullish case is largely forward‑looking, based on margin normalization and AI demand. ^[48]
Execution risk: Delivering on 40%+ gross margins while ramping cutting‑edge technologies like BiCS8 and HBF is complex; delays, yield issues or customer qualification problems could derail the story. ^[49]
Concentrated thematic positioning: Sandisk is effectively a levered bet on AI‑driven storage demand. If AI infrastructure spending normalizes or rotates toward alternative architectures, the company’s core thesis could be challenged. ^[50]

Investors also remember the brand‑level reputational hit from earlier SanDisk Extreme portable SSD failures and related legal actions when the company was still under Western Digital; while firmware fixes and the corporate separation have moved that episode into the rear‑view mirror, it remains a reminder that storage vendors live and die on reliability. ^[51]

Bottom Line: Is the Sandisk Pullback a Buying Opportunity?

As of December 3, 2025, Sandisk sits at an uncomfortable intersection:

Fundamentals are clearly improving — revenue growth has reaccelerated, margins are climbing, and management is leaning into a tight supply environment with aggressive pricing. ^[52]
The stock has already discounted a lot of good news, with gains north of 400% this year and expectations of continued AI‑driven growth baked into many forecasts. ^[53]
Most analysts remain bullish, but their targets now cluster only modestly above the current price, with a minority projecting much higher upside and a wide spread between high and low estimates. ^[54]

For long‑term investors who are comfortable with semiconductor‑cycle risk and sharp drawdowns, the current pullback may look like a normal correction within an ongoing AI‑storage uptrend, especially if NAND shortages persist through 2026. For more defensive investors, Sandisk’s volatility, early‑cycle losses and dependence on a still‑evolving AI capex boom may justify waiting for either lower prices or clearer evidence that high margins are sustainable.

As always, this overview is informational only and not investment advice. Anyone considering SNDK should evaluate their own risk tolerance, investment horizon and portfolio diversification, and should consult a qualified financial adviser before making trading decisions.