SanDisk stock (NASDAQ: SNDK) has climbed 541% in 2026, but Wall Street is reluctant to call the top after management outlined a model designed to make NAND less cyclical.
The stock jumped 13.7% to $1,528.11 on Thursday, extending its four-session gain to 25.8%, after SanDisk’s investor day.
Management expects mid-to-high-teens revenue growth from fiscal 2028 through 2030, with adjusted gross margins around 80% and operating margins near 75%.
Analysts increasingly believe SanDisk can preserve strong earnings even when NAND pricing cools.
Wall Street thinks the earnings boom can last longer
Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani reiterated an Outperform rating and $2,800 price target after the investor day.
Daryanani highlighted SanDisk’s eight New Business Model agreements, carrying $93.9 billion of contract value at floor pricing and running for as long as five years. He said the company expects them to generate “highly attractive returns even at floor pricing.”
That is central to the bull case.
Memory has traditionally been brutally cyclical. Strong demand lifts prices, producers expand supply and additional capacity eventually drives pricing and margins lower.
SanDisk is trying to soften that cycle by locking in volumes and economics with major customers. The agreements cover about half of fiscal 2027 bit shipments and roughly two-thirds of fiscal 2028 output.
JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur said after SanDisk’s latest earnings that the model offered a path towards stronger earnings power, reduced cyclicality and more durable fundamentals.
Analysts are not assuming NAND prices stay elevated forever, but they are betting SanDisk will remain more profitable when prices weaken.
AI storage offers another growth engine
AI is also creating new forms of storage demand rather than merely extending the existing NAND cycle.
SanDisk is developing high-bandwidth flash, or HBF, for AI workloads as inference creates demand for fast storage near processors.
SanDisk and SK Hynix have released an open HBF standard, while Google is participating in the consortium.
Management expects to begin shipping HBF samples next year.
That opportunity sits alongside expanding data-centre SSD demand and helps explain why management believes gross margins near 80% can remain sustainable through fiscal 2030.
SanDisk’s adjusted gross margin reached 84.6% last quarter, compared with 26.4% a year earlier.
Argus Research analyst Jim Kelleher recently upgraded SanDisk to Buy with a $1,600 target.
Barron’s reported that Kelleher sees the company in the early stages of a multiyear period of revenue acceleration and margin expansion, supported by AI and cloud investment.
A 541% rally still carries serious risk
The bullish thesis has not eliminated doubts.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Srini Pajjuri said investors may continue valuing SanDisk on traditional memory metrics until the durability of its new contracts becomes clearer.
He noted that the floor-pricing economics have not yet been tested through a meaningful downturn.
Jefferies analyst Blayne Curtis also cut his target to $1,750 from $3,000 while maintaining a Buy rating, pointing to moderating NAND pricing, lower gross-margin guidance and questions around near-term bit shipments.
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