SanDisk Corp. (SNDK) surged 5.02% in pre-market trading on Tuesday, as investors reacted to the company's joint announcement with SK Hynix of the first-ever High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) standard specification, alongside mounting optimism ahead of its upcoming earnings report.

The primary catalyst for the move was the release of the HBF technical specification through the Open Compute Project (OCP), achieved just six months after SanDisk and SK Hynix formed their alliance. HBF represents a new memory tier positioned between high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and solid-state drives (SSDs), supporting up to 512GB capacity and bandwidth ranging from 0.4 TB/s to 3.0 TB/s. The technology is designed to ease AI infrastructure bandwidth constraints while scaling capacity for AI inference systems. Notably, Google and Tenstorrent have also joined the HBF consortium, signaling broader industry adoption and validation of the standard.

Adding to the positive sentiment, SanDisk is scheduled to report fiscal fourth-quarter earnings after market close on August 5. Market consensus expects revenue of $8.394 billion, representing over 340% year-over-year growth, and adjusted EPS of $34.45. The company has a strong track record of beating estimates in recent quarters, and some investors view the prior selloff as having excessively priced in pessimistic expectations, attracting bargain-hunting capital ahead of the results.