Nicholas Mugalli
Institutional TMT & Macro Research, AI/Semiconductors/Policy
SanDisk's data-center flash growth shows AI inference is becoming a larger storage customer. Data-center revenue reached $4.8bn, up 61% in a quarter and over 40% of sales; total revenue of $11bn and EPS of $49.51 beat expectations. Guidance of $12.4bn revenue and $56 EPS suggests feared supply normalization has not yet eroded pricing. Overweight, with a $2,700 target. x.com x.comÂ
SanDisk is still early in the memory supercycle after its investor day convinced even conservative analysts to raise targets. JPMorgan lifted its target to $2,250 from $1,528, Goldman Sachs also turned more bullish, and the average target is now $2,500. The CFO said that even at floor pricing, margins on its NBM agreements should not fall below about 80% in any year over the period. x.com x.comÂ
Sandisk's fast-growing data-center revenue strengthens its case among memory names with upside. Data-center revenue rose 61% quarter over quarter; revenue of $11.03B, adjusted EPS of $49.51 and adjusted gross margin of 85.1% all exceeded estimates. For upside among Micron, Sandisk and Kioxia, Micron ranks first, then Sandisk, then Kioxia, until further guidance. x.com x.comÂ
SanDisk CEO David Goeckeler's report of customer signals beyond fiscal 2030 adds storage to the long-duration AI hardware-demand case. He says those signals come through new-business-model partnerships; Micron and SK hynix in memory and Lumentum in photonics were already cited as signs of demand beyond 2030. x.comÂ
Sandisk's datacenter shipments and restrained bit-supply plan strengthen its growth case, without settling contract protection in a downturn. Management attributed roughly 60% of fiscal Q1 revenue growth to volume and 40% to price; datacenter sales rose 61% sequentially to $4.8B, supplying 88% of total growth. It retains mid-to-high-teens bit growth rather than accelerating supply. Consumer sales fell 29%, and the CFO cautioned against carrying Q2's growth rate into fiscal Q3. x.com x.comÂ
Sandisk's earnings growth makes its valuation look unusually low, with guidance showing no slowdown. Revenue rose 378% year over year, and $52.5 GAAP EPS implies a 6.1 annualized P/E, below Micron's. Sandisk's roughly 85% gross margin also compares favorably with SK hynix's apparently sub-50% NAND margin. Next-quarter guidance calls for $12.2 billion-$12.6 billion of revenue and $55-$57 non-GAAP EPS. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Sandisk looks like an obvious buy at about 11x forward free cash flow because AI is creating ever-growing demand for both compute and storage. The memory boom is not going away soon, and there is no need to know exactly when the cycle slows, only that underlying demand remains incredibly strong. The biggest risk is looking back and wondering why it was not bought. x.comÂ
Networking, power and compute look more durable than cyclical memory in the AI buildout. Lumentum's revenue compounded year after year across the 2010s and 2020s, unlike Micron's; AWS revenue also compounded. Lumentum, Nebius, Bloom Energy and Credo should heavily outperform SanDisk and Micron from here, though AI itself remains heavily doubted. x.com x.comÂ
Sandisk could be the memory supercycle's biggest winner because long-term NAND contracts may make earnings more durable than in past cycles. About $93.9 billion of floor-priced deals cover half of expected FY27 bit shipments and two-thirds in FY28 amid rising AI storage demand. Floors do not guarantee margins; management's roughly 50% adjusted free cash flow margin target for FY28-30 is not reported cash flow. Profitable contracts and sustainable cash generation could support a higher multiple. … Show more
Western Digital benefits from HDDs' low storage cost and growing cloud demand, with higher NAND prices adding pricing power. Nearline bit demand normally grows 20-25% with some deflation, while AI data growth now exceeds 30%; HDD costs ~$0.02-$0.03/GB versus ~$0.25 for NAND. Before AI, the consolidated, ~95% cloud-exposed market looked worth a low-to-mid-teens multiple of normalized EPS. Entry barriers are extremely high, but irrational competition among the three players is a risk. x.com x.com … Show more
SanDisk's investor-day projections look too rich, as forecasting four years out on flash offload in AI inference is speculative. Measured against an 18TB attach-rate max bull case, now more like 8-10TB, they imply SanDisk assumes KV cache grows with users and context, many HBF customers, which looks unlikely now, or rock-solid four-year long-term agreements. The core disagreement is how big and how fast flash offload becomes ubiquitous. x.com x.comÂ
The memory supercycle has years left, with the shortage modeled through 2028 because AI data centers need memory as much as GPUs. 2026 NAND demand is growing 20-22% against supply growth of 15-17%. Sandisk guided Q3 revenue to $4.4-4.8B, and its gross margin rose from 26% to 67% in twelve months. Its High Bandwidth Flash, co-developed with SK hynix and targeting 8-16x HBM's capacity at a fraction of the cost, would reprice the whole company again if it ships in H2 2026. x.comÂ
