New York, Feb 26, 2026, 10:02 EST — Regular session
- SanDisk shares tack on roughly 3.5% during morning trading, picking up after Wednesday’s close.
- CEO notes customers are pushing for longer contracts, with data center demand fueling the need for more NAND.
- Andrew Left at Citron says the rally looks like a misread—he sees it as just another turn in a cyclical market.
SanDisk Corp climbed 3.5% to $654.60 Thursday morning, recouping ground lost earlier in the week. Investors responded to fresh management remarks on extended supply deals with data-center clients.
This is notable—SanDisk’s stock has turned into a high-beta stand-in for both the AI ramp-up and the squeezed memory sector, whipping around on any signal about pricing power sticking around. Moving to multi-year contracts could take some of the chop out of revenue, which usually resets every quarter. But there’s a catch: management’s timing on the cycle matters even more now.
It’s been about a year since SanDisk separated from Western Digital, and since then, shares have swung wildly as traders piled into anything tied to AI-fueled demand for storage and memory. The sharp moves haven’t gone unnoticed—short sellers have returned to the stock.
SanDisk ended the previous session at $632.38, Investing.com data show. Shares kicked off Thursday at $645.74, moving between $636.37 and $656.25 through the session.
SanDisk bounced back after tumbling Tuesday, when Citron Research revealed it was short the stock. Shares dropped roughly 5% following Citron’s call. The firm argued investors were pricing SanDisk like a “structural winner,” ignoring its real position as a cyclical memory name. “NVIDIA has a moat. SanDisk sells a commodity,” Citron said. Investing.com
Andrew Left, the well-known short-seller, sounded a warning in another post, saying investors were “pricing SanDisk like it’s $NVDA.” He flagged Samsung as a competitive threat, with supply constraints beginning to let up. Business Insider
CEO David Goeckeler told Bernstein’s TMT Forum on Wednesday that SanDisk is shifting its approach with data-center customers, opting for multi-year supply deals instead of sticking with the standard quarterly pricing structure. “We’re trying to maximize these two things,” Goeckeler said—returns and sustainability no matter how the market shakes out. Investing.com
CFO Luis Visoso told the forum that customers locking in for the longer haul will get first dibs when supply gets tight, while those opting to negotiate every quarter may find availability restricted, Investing.com reported.
SanDisk’s management is set to present at 6:30 p.m. ET on Thursday. According to Lynx Equity Strategies analyst KC Rajkumar, the company is likely to address the ongoing supply shortage, plus ongoing talks for “multi-year non-cancellable” deals with large cloud clients. Rajkumar also flagged that NAND supply constraints could easily stretch beyond those in DRAM, with tightness possibly persisting through 2028. Investing.com
Goeckeler flagged ongoing product development for hyperscalers, mentioning “Stargate”—a 128-terabyte QLC enterprise SSD that’s still waiting for its revenue debut. He also called out a high-bandwidth flash partnership with SK Hynix, designed for AI inference workloads. Investing.com
A Form 144, filed Feb. 25, disclosed a planned 3,500-share sale valued at roughly $2.2 million, set to go through Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. The form signals intent to sell restricted or control securities under SEC Rule 144.
The bullish argument depends on the market staying constrained. Should supply pick up speed or if cloud spending falters, prices could drop fast—Samsung is still the heavyweight to watch, and short sellers call this squeeze short-lived.
Thursday night’s Bernstein forum is in focus—investors are scanning for specifics on contract duration, pricing, and when shipments might start. After that, attention shifts to the next earnings report, slated for May 13.
