Sandisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) surged 22% on June 25 without reporting a single piece of its own financial news that day.
The rally came because Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) had reported its fiscal third-quarter results the evening before, sending Micron shares up roughly 16%.
Sandisk moved more than Micron itself because every product Sandisk sells is built on NAND flash, making Micron’s NAND data a direct proxy for Sandisk’s own pricing environment.
Micron’s fiscal third-quarter NAND sales nearly doubled sequentially, rising 99% to $9.9 billion, with average selling prices jumping in the mid-80% range.
That followed an already-strong 82% sequential increase in fiscal Q2, when NAND prices rose in the high-70% range, showing flash price gains were still accelerating into the spring.
Sandisk’s own fiscal fourth-quarter results, reported August 5, confirmed the picture, with revenue climbing 51% sequentially to $8.97 billion and surging 372% year over year.
Only around a third of that sequential gain came from shipping more flash memory, with higher prices responsible for the remainder of the jump.
Despite the June euphoria, Sandisk gave back the entire 22% gain within a week, closing at $1,745 on July 2, below where it had traded before Micron ever reported.
Heading into Micron’s next report on Wednesday, September 30, Sandisk trades at around $1,688, roughly 28% below the $2,354 peak it hit in June.
Shares were already under pressure, falling about 5% on Monday after OpenAI said it had paused training its most capable artificial intelligence models.
Sandisk’s management has already signaled that growth is cooling, guiding for fiscal first-quarter revenue of $10.3 billion to $10.8 billion, around 15% to 20% above the prior quarter.
The company guided for a non-GAAP adjusted gross margin of 83% to 85% for the current quarter, compared to 84.6% last quarter, suggesting price gains are expected to slow considerably.
Micron’s fiscal fourth quarter ended in early September and covers roughly two months of Sandisk’s current quarter, making Wednesday’s report an early outside check on those months.
The most critical figure for Sandisk watchers will be how much Micron’s NAND average selling prices climbed in fiscal Q4, after two straight quarters of increases exceeding 75%.
Micron’s data center solid-state drive business will also be closely watched, having passed $5 billion in revenue in fiscal Q3, more than doubling from the prior quarter.
That is the same market driving Sandisk’s fastest-growing segment, where revenue climbed 103% sequentially in fiscal Q4 to around $3 billion, accounting for roughly a third of all sales.
In June, Micron said it expected supply to remain tight against demand for both DRAM and NAND past calendar 2027, with NAND supply squeezed further as manufacturers shift cleanroom space toward DRAM production.
Any softening of that supply outlook would likely hit Sandisk harder than Micron, since Sandisk has no DRAM business to offset any weakness in flash pricing.
At around $1,688, Sandisk trades at approximately 23 times the past year’s earnings, suggesting investors are already skeptical that current flash prices will hold.
Annualizing the $44 to $46 of adjusted earnings per share management guided for this quarter alone puts the stock at under 10 times earnings on a forward basis.
