SanDisk's massive bull run earns a place in the Nasdaq 100:
SanDisk has surged 250% year-to-date, driven by AI data storage demand. It rose another 12% on Monday after news of its inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 effective April 20. At a market cap approaching $140 billion, the stock has gone from a forgotten NAND (a type of non-volatile flash memory technology that retains data without power) supplier to the hottest AI trade on the market.
Breaking down the buzz:
More than 200 investment products tracking the Nasdaq-100 represent over $600 billion in assets under management globally. Every fund benchmarked to that index has to own SanDisk before April 20, whether the managers want to or not. That forced buying is a technical tailwind, but it is not a verdict on the business. The underlying story is more substantive than mechanics, though.
SanDisk's data center segment posted revenue of $440 million last quarter, up 76% YoY and 64% sequentially, with management projecting high 60% exabyte growth in data centers for the year. Analysts have linked that surge to a NAND shortage they do not expect to ease before 2028, which gives SanDisk immense pricing power. Earnings land on April 30, two weeks after inclusion, and expectations are high; consensus is calling for revenue between $4.4 billion and $4.8 billion for the quarter.
Why this matters:
SNDK trades at roughly 17x forward earnings, compared to sub-10x multiples for Micron and SK Hynix. That premium requires the AI storage thesis to keep compounding. NAND flash is cyclical by nature; small changes in utilization create large swings in earnings power, and every memory upcycle has eventually rolled. The bulls argue AI inference workloads are essentially raising the floor for storage demand. They may be right, but the market is already pricing in a lot of that being right, and SanDisk has only been a standalone public company for just over a year.
Copy my portfolio for steady and consistent growth, $SNDK (Sandisk Corp/DE)... Show More
Not investment advice. The author may have financial interests in the mentioned instruments.
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Wed May 13 2026 04:35:54 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
