SanDisk's Blowout Quarter Gets Overshadowed by a Guidance Shock That Has Erased Nearly a Third of the Stock
Published on 08/08/2026 at 16:12 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The arithmetic is almost jarring: an 8.97 billion US-dollar quarter, a 372 percent year-over-year revenue surge, and a share price that has shed 30.92 percent in a month. SanDisk delivered the strongest financial results in its corporate history on Wednesday, and the market responded by punishing the stock with a ferocity that has little to do with what the company has already achieved — and everything to do with what investors fear is coming next.
By Friday's close, the shares had fallen to 1,050.00 euros, a single-day drop of 4.55 percent that extended a selloff triggered two days earlier when management's guidance for the coming quarter landed well short of the most bullish Wall Street forecasts.
The Numbers That Should Have Been Enough
The fourth fiscal quarter produced revenue of 8.97 billion US dollars, up 372 percent from the prior year and 51 percent sequentially, alongside adjusted earnings per share of 39.25 US dollars. GAAP net income came in at 6.90 billion US dollars. For the full fiscal year 2026, revenue reached 20.25 billion US dollars, a 175 percent increase over the previous year.
The problem was never the rearview mirror. Management guided first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue to a range of 10.3 to 10.8 billion US dollars, with adjusted earnings per share between 44.00 and 46.00 US dollars. Those figures represent continued growth by any historical measure — but analysts had been modeling closer to 12.3 billion US dollars, and the gap between expectation and guidance sent the stock down more than ten percent in a single session.
Compounding the disappointment were signals on NAND pricing. After a year of dramatic price increases that had fueled the stock's ascent, the company indicated only moderate gains in average selling prices for the September quarter. For a market that had grown accustomed to SanDisk riding a pricing wave, the implied deceleration felt like a warning.
Wall Street Splits Into Camps
The analyst response has been anything but uniform, with price targets now spanning a remarkable range of 1,400 to 2,800 US dollars.
The most dramatic cut came from Jefferies, where Blayne Curtis slashed the target from 3,000 to 1,750 US dollars — a reduction of 1,250 US dollars — while maintaining a buy recommendation. Curtis pointed to weakening NAND pricing momentum as the driver, describing a marked slowdown from the price surge of recent quarters.
Wells Fargo's Aaron Rakers went further, downgrading the stock from Overweight to Neutral and trimming the target from 1,600 to 1,420 US dollars on valuation concerns. RBC Capital's Srini Pajjuri stood out as the lone voice moving in the opposite direction, raising his target — though at 1,300 US dollars, it remains the lowest estimate among major banks.
In between, a cluster of firms trimmed targets while holding firm on their overall stance. Evercore ISI's Amit Daryanani cut from 3,100 to 2,800 US dollars but kept an Outperform rating, noting that projected gross margins of 83 to 85 percent for the September quarter exceed consensus estimates. Citigroup moved to 2,100 US dollars with a Buy rating intact, describing the pricing outlook as "muted." Goldman Sachs reaffirmed its Buy with a 2,200 US-dollar target, leaning on the strength of long-term supply agreements. Morgan Stanley held at 1,750 US dollars with an Overweight rating, citing structurally robust NAND demand, while Wedbush kept its 2,000 US-dollar target and Outperform rating — arguing that the company's own pricing guidance may once again prove conservative, given ongoing supply constraints and contracted revenue.
Just as SanDisk is leaning on long-term supply agreements to weather pricing uncertainty, your business can protect itself against a different kind of risk — the kind that leads to costly fines and legal exposure. A free toolkit with 41 ready-to-use templates and checklists helps you document workplace hazards and stay compliant with UK health and safety law. Download the free Risk Assessment Toolkit
Contracts, Buybacks, and a New Memory Standard
Amid the selloff, management moved to signal confidence in ways that go beyond words. The board approved an additional 14 billion US dollars in share repurchases, bringing the remaining buyback authorization to 15.5 billion US dollars — a substantial commitment that typically reflects conviction in the company's own valuation.
The company also disclosed five additional agreements under its "New Business Model" framework, including three with new customers and two expansions of existing contracts. That brings the total to ten agreements representing contracted long-term revenue of 93.9 billion US dollars — a backlog that provides unusual visibility into future demand.
On the technology front, SanDisk and SK hynix jointly published the first technical specification for High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) through the Open Compute Project, a memory standard aimed at AI inference workloads. The standardization effort, which began only six months ago, has already attracted participation from Google and Tenstorrent.
What Happens Next
The company has scheduled an investor day for August 13, where chief executive David Goeckeler and chief financial officer Luis Visoso are expected to elaborate on the business outlook. Institutional positioning heading into that event appears mixed: Dimensional Fund Advisors built a new position worth roughly 100 million US dollars, while Delta Global Management significantly reduced its holdings during the second quarter.
The 30-day decline of 30.92 percent reflects a market recalibrating its expectations for NAND pricing after an extraordinary run. Whether the selloff represents a rational reassessment or an overreaction will likely depend on whether the company's cautious guidance proves to be the conservative posture Wedbush suspects — or the early warning sign Jefferies fears. For now, the market has chosen to focus on the gap between what SanDisk promised and what investors wanted to hear, even as the company's contracted backlog and buyback program suggest a management team that sees considerably more value in the stock than the current price implies.
