By Adam Levine
Flash-storage company Sandisk has seen its stock soar by 3,300% in the last year on the back of quickly rising demand from AI data centers, tight inventories, and rising prices.
When the company reports its third-quarter earnings results on Thursday afternoon, investors will be eager to learn if it can live up to high expectations.
On average, Wall Street analysts polled by FactSet expect adjusted earnings per share above the high end of Sandisk's guidance at $14.62. That's up from a 30 cent loss last year. Sales are seen rising by 178% to $4.7 billion, and on their way to $7.8 billion next year.
Sandisk is seeing this kind of sales growth because high-speed storage chips have become crucial in artificial-intelligence servers. Just four companies -- Amazon.com, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta Platforms -- will spend over $700 billion on new AI data centers this year, and Sandisk stands to benefit from that demand.
Like with memory chips, manufacturing capacity is being heavily strained and there are shortages, driving up prices. Both Meta and Microsoft cited component pricing as pushing up 2026 capex, and they were likely referring to the swift rise in memory and storage costs.
New capacity is not likely to be coming online until the middle of next year, so the expectation is that inventories will remain tight, and prices high.
Sandisk got an extra boost in January when Nvidia announced an additional tier of its storage technology that will be shipping inside Nvidia's new industry-leading AI servers later this year. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said this use of storage chips could become the largest storage market in the world.
Write to Adam Levine at adam.levine@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 30, 2026 13:02 ET (17:02 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.