Silicon Investor - WDC, NAND, NVM, enterprise storage systems, etc.

[Sam] Barclays Upgrades Sandisk to Overweight From Equalweight, Adjusts PT to $2,300 F...

Sam — 5/27/2026 5:58:44 AM

Barclays Upgrades Sandisk to Overweight From Equalweight, Adjusts PT to $2,300 From $1,200

MT NEWSWIRES 5:12 AM ET 5/27/2026

SNDK	1589.55	0 (0%)
QUOTES AS OF 04:00:00 PM ET 05/26/2026

Symbol Last Price Change

05:12 AM EDT, 05/27/2026 (MT Newswires) -- Sandisk(SNDK) has an average rating of overweight and mean price target of $1,683.78, according to analysts polled by FactSet.

[Sam] Evercore ISI Group Maintains Outperform on Western Digital, Raises Price Target ...

Sam — 5/27/2026 5:57:11 AM

Evercore ISI Group Maintains Outperform on Western Digital, Raises Price Target to $575

[Sam] Barclays Adjusts Price Target on Western Digital to $620 From $450, Maintains Ov...

Sam — 5/27/2026 5:50:05 AM

Barclays Adjusts Price Target on Western Digital to $620 From $450, Maintains Overweight Rating

MT NEWSWIRES 5:20 AM ET 5/27/2026

[Sam] Sandisk CEO Says Memory Market Will Stay 'Undersupplied.' AI Is Changing the Bu...

Sam — 5/21/2026 5:47:14 AM

Sandisk CEO Says Memory Market Will Stay 'Undersupplied.' AI Is Changing the Business. -- Barrons.com

Dow Jones Newswires May 20, 2026 02:01:00 PM ET

The flash memory market will remain "undersupplied for a long period of time," Sandisk CEO David Goeckeler told investors Wednesday, creating an opening for the memory maker to transform its business.

With memory becoming a crucial component in the artificial-intelligence boom, Sandisk is moving to multi-year agreements that give both the company and its buyers clearer picture of future orders and expenses. That model should help stabilize what was once a highly cyclical industry, Goeckeler argued at a J.P. Morgan conference.

Sandisk stock was up 0.8% to $1,394.51 on Wednesday.

Shares have surged almost 500% this year and are up roughly 3,500% over the last 12 months, raising the question of when the stock will peak. Past memory booms have resulted in oversupply and then deep downturns. That cyclicality was " really corrosive to our business," Goeckeler said.

Suppliers like Sandisk want to plan and operate fabrication plants at high capacity over a long time horizon. Customers, meanwhile, have typically wanted to buy only the chips they needed for a given quarter.

"You build a huge asset, you turn it on and the idea is you don't want to turn it off. It's very expensive to turn it off," Goeckeler explained. "That's not necessarily our customers' business model. They don't really think about, 'hey, how do I consume on a very predictable basis?' "

AI is changing that. Large customers want a dependable supply years in advance, and price is a secondary concern given supply constraints. Sandisk has signed five long-term new-business-model agreements as of the past quarter and is in active talks with other clients. It sees the supply-demand imbalance continuing at least through the end of 2027.

"Most cases, our customers are approaching us and the single first thing they say is, 'how can you ensure there will be supply?' It's not a price, " said Luis Felipe Visoso, the company's chief financial officer.

These longer-term agreements include guarantees that get Sandisk paid even if a customer decides to walk away from the deal. Combined with a stronger balance sheet, the protections limit the downside for the company and its shareholders.

"We want to get rid of the cyclicality or at least dampen the cyclicality," Goeckeler said. "Or at least when the cyclicality comes, have different techniques to deal with it than we have in the past."

Growing confidence from investors that downturns won't be as painful as they used to be could boost Sandisk shares even further. Remarkably, while the stock has surged 3,500% in a year, it trades at 8.5 times projected 12-month earnings -- the same multiple as a year ago.

Write to Nate Wolf at nate.wolf@barrons.com

[Sam] $6.2 Billion in 30 Days: How Sandisk, Micron And Seagate Powered One Of The Fast...

Sam — 5/11/2026 7:33:58 AM

$6.2 Billion in 30 Days: How Sandisk, Micron And Seagate Powered One Of The Fastest ETF Launches Ever

BENZINGA 2:41 PM ET 5/10/2026

MU	746.81	0 (0%)
QUOTES AS OF 04:15:00 PM ET 05/08/2026

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The Roundhill Memory ETF has become one of the fastest launches in history, helped by the ongoing demand for companies in the memory chip industry.

DRAM has already jumped by over 80% since its launch in April, with its Assets Under Management (AUM) hitting $6.25 billion. This is a big milestone for an ETF with an expense ratio of 0.68%.

DRAM ETF Gains Momentum Amid Sandisk, Micron, Seagate Boom

The Roundhill Memory ETF aims to give investors access to the biggest players in the memory chip industry. It is a highly concentrated fund with just 13 companies, with Micron having the biggest share.

The other top companies in the fund are South Korea's SK Hynix, Sandisk, Kioxia, Seagate, and Western Digital. All these are some of the top gainers in the equities market in the past few months.

Sandisk stock has jumped by 540% this year and by 4,367% in the last 12 months. It has soared by 100% in the last one month.

Similarly, Seagate Technology (STX) has soared by 55% in the last month and by 177% this year. Micron Technology(MU) has jumped by 153%, while SK Hynix is up by 160% this year.

These companies have soared amid the ongoing Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom that has led to a significant memory chip shortage. A recent report showed that memory prices soared by between 80% and 90% in the first quarter.

The surging demand has driven a significant revenue increase among top manufacturers. SanDisk’s third-quarter revenue jumped 97% to $5.95 billion, with the CEO describing it as an “inflection point” for the company.

Similarly, Micron's revenue surged by 75% in the second fiscal quarter to $23.5 billion. The management expects that the higher prices and lower costs will lead to a robust revenue and margin growth this year.

Seagate Technologies also published strong numbers, with the revenue soaring to $3.1 billion. Dave Mosley, the CEO, noted that the company was entering a "new era of structural growth."

Valuations Still Reasonable, But Overbought

Conditions Pose A Risk Memory chip companies have soared as the top spenders in the data center industry continue boosting their capex plans. The top four spenders – Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Amazon, and Google – plans to spend $725 billion this year in capex. Most of these funds will go to GPUs and memory chips.

Still, some investors are questioning whether the memory chip rally has more room to run. In a recent statement, Michael Burry warned that the industry was in a bubble.

However, a closer look at some key metrics shows that the valuations are still reasonable. For example, Micron stock trades at a forward PE multiple of just 12, lower than the S&P 500 Index's 21. SanDisk has a multiple of 24, while Western Digital stands at 25.

The risk, however, is that these stocks have become severely overbought, which could trigger profit-taking. DRAM’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) has surged to 83, deep in overbought territory, while Micron’s has reached 84 and SanDisk’s has crossed 80. These stretched conditions, combined with a significant divergence from their historical moving averages, suggest a pullback may be on the horizon.

[Sam] Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD Announced By Cliff Robinson - May 5, 2026 Micron ...

Sam — 5/9/2026 4:22:31 PM

Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD Announced
By Cliff Robinson - May 5, 2026

Micron has a new capacity point for its 6600 ION NVMe SSD family, and this one is the eye-catcher. The company now has a 245.76TB version of the Micron 6600 ION, giving data center platforms a way to put almost a quarter petabyte of flash into a single SSD.

Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD Announced

The Micron 6600 ION is the company’s capacity-focused PCIe Gen5 data center SSD line built with Micron G9 QLC NAND. The family already includes the 122.88TB E3.S drive, and the 245.76TB model moves that same basic idea into larger E3.L and U.2 options. The result is a drive aimed less at peak transactional performance and more at dense AI data lakes, hyperscale storage, analytics clusters, and other environments where capacity per rack and watts per terabyte matter.

Micron 6600 ION featuring G9 QLC NAND

Micron says the new 245.76TB drive delivers up to 13.7GB/s for sequential reads and 3.0GB/s for sequential writes, up to 1.78 million random read IOPS, and a maximum power rating of 30W. On its public product page, the company says the E3.S 122TB version can store over 2.4PB per 1U, while the E3.L 245TB version can reach over 3.9PB per 1U. Micron’s briefing material goes even further, showing a 36U rack comparison with up to 176.9PB using 245.76TB E3.L SSDs.

Micron 6600 ION PCIe Gen5 data center SSD specifications

The bigger story here is not simply that a 245TB-class SSD exists. It is the EDSFF form factors that are making much denser storage shelves practical. Micron’s materials compare a 1EB deployment using 245.76TB E3.L SSDs against 44TB hard drives and show a 5.6x reduction in rack space, based on Micron’s 36U storage allocation assumptions. That is the pitch: fewer chassis, fewer racks, and less supporting infrastructure around the same dataset.

Micron 6600 ION E3.L rack density comparison

Micron is also positioning the drive around AI and object storage, which is common for the AI data centers, where this kind of drive is prevalent.

Micron 6600 ION object storage performance comparison

We previously covered the lower-capacity 6600 ION alongside Micron’s broader data center SSD lineup in our article on the Micron 9650, 6600 ION, and 7600 NVMe SSDs. We also covered prior ION generations, including the Micron 6550 ION 61.44TB PCIe Gen5 SSD and our Micron 6500 ION 30.72TB review. The jump from those capacities to 245TB is a reminder of how quickly QLC and EDSFF are changing the dense storage discussion.

Final Words

With the cost of modern SSDs, the Micron 6600 ION 245TB is not going to be the drive for every workload. Frankly, pricing pressure is weighing on even large AI cluster build-outs. At the same time, the density that solutions like this can provide is just awesome.

servethehome.com

[Sam] Micron pr--the stock is now over $600 premarket! Industry-Leading 245TB Micron...

Sam — 5/5/2026 9:14:31 AM

Micron pr--the stock is now over $600 premarket!

Industry-Leading 245TB Micron 6600 ION Data Center SSD Now Shipping
Redefining rack-scale density with breakthrough energy efficiency versus hard drives

GLOBENEWSWIRE 9:00 AM ET 5/5/2026

MU	576.45	0 (0%)
QUOTES AS OF 04:00:00 PM ET 05/04/2026

Symbol Last Price Change

Image: 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSDs

A Media Snippet accompanying this announcement is available by clicking on this link.

BOISE, Idaho, May 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Micron Technology, Inc.(MU) , today announced it is now shipping the 245TB capacity Micron® 6600 ION SSD, the world’s highest capacity commercially available SSD. The drive marks a major step forward in rack-scale storage density for data centers and is designed to support AI, cloud, enterprise and hyperscale workloads, including next-generation AI data lakes and cloud-scale file and object storage. The 245TB Micron 6600 ION E3.L requires 82% fewer racks to achieve equivalent raw storage capacity compared to HDD-based deployments.1 Built with Micron® G9 QLC NAND that is at least one generation ahead of any competing QLC used in data center SSDs, the 245TB Micron 6600 ION redefines high-capacity data center storage.2 Customers can now store and process significantly more data in far less space, while reducing power and cooling demands without sacrificing the performance required for large-scale, data-intensive workloads.

“AI workloads are driving massive growth in shared data, continuing the shift of data center storage share from HDDs toward SSDs. With 245TB in a single SSD, the Micron 6600 ION makes solid state storage the clear choice for modern data centers," said Jeremy Werner, senior vice president and general manager of Micron's Core Data Center Business Unit. "This breakthrough capacity gives data center operators a critical new lever to improve rack-level total cost of ownership, especially as power availability becomes a defining constraint for AI infrastructure scale.”

“Rapid AI dataset growth is shifting storage economics from individual drives to rack-level efficiency,” said Jeff Janukowicz, research vice president of solid state drives and enabling technologies at IDC. “Operators need more usable capacity per rack while staying within strict power and cooling constraints. Micron’s 245TB drives deliver the density required to scale AI data pipelines without increasing data center footprints. Predictable performance, energy efficiency and higher capacity are essential to building cost-effective AI infrastructure.”

New economics for data center storage at quarter-petabyte scale
The 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD is available in both U.2 and E3.L form factors for massive storage capacity. The smaller physical footprint and increased capacity per drive enables operational and data center management simplicity and reduces failure points and maintenance needs.

Power consumption is equally transformative. The 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD consumes up to 30 watts (W) at maximum power, only half the power consumed of a comparable-capacity HDD deployment.3 Additionally, these energy efficiency gains can support data center sustainability initiatives by helping reduce energy usage, cooling requirements and carbon emissions — key priorities for global operators under increasing environmental and cost pressures.

"AI workloads are pushing data center capacity to the limit, and when you can fit significantly more storage into every rack, the math changes: less power, less floor space, less operational overhead," said Travis Vigil, senior vice president, ISG product management, Dell Technologies. "That's what 245TB drives in Dell storage systems for AI will deliver. It's a meaningful reduction in total cost of ownership for customers building out AI and large-scale data center environments."

Setting new performance and efficiency benchmarks for sustainable scale
The Micron 6600 ION SSD is built to support extreme-capacity deployments demonstrating superior AI workload performance and energy efficiency at scale versus data centers utilizing HDDs. Testing in Micron labs demonstrates dramatic gains in energy efficiency, throughput and latency versus HDD-based systems:

For AI workloads: The 245TB Micron 6600 ION provided up to 84 times better energy efficiency, 8.6 times faster AI preprocessing and 3.4 times better ingest throughput, with up to 29 times lower latency.4
Object storage workloads: The 245TB Micron 6600 ION demonstrated up to 435 times better throughput per watt, 96 times faster time to first byte and 58 times better aggregate throughput.5

At scale, 1.9 times more energy is required for an HDD deployment versus 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSDs in a 1EB deployment.6 These at-scale energy efficiency gains can translate into measurable sustainability impacts, such as:

CO2 savings equivalent to the amount of CO2 absorbed by over 9,000 mature trees per year7
438 metric tons (MT) per year of CO2 reduction8
921 megawatt-hours (MWh) per year of energy saved6
HVAC cooling savings of over 3.14 billion British thermal units (Btu) per year9

The Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD will be on display in the Micron booth (#226) at Dell Tech World, May 18 – 21, 2026. Stop by to see the Micron 6600 ION in a 40-slot Dell PowerEdge server optimized for data lake storage.

Additional resources:

6600 ION SSD webpage
Data center SSD webpage
Micron 6600 ION SSD image gallery
6600 ION SSD product brief
Space and power economics
Rethinking storage foundations
Scaling object storage
Enabling AI performance and power efficiency
AI data lake building blocks
AI data extraction, transformation & loading

About Micron Technology, Inc.(MU)
Micron Technology, Inc. (MU), is an industry leader in innovative memory and storage solutions, transforming how the world uses information to enrich life for all. With a relentless focus on our customers, technology leadership, and manufacturing and operational excellence, Micron delivers a rich portfolio of high-performance DRAM, NAND and NOR memory and storage products. Every day, the innovations that our people create fuel the data economy, enabling advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and compute-intensive applications that unleash opportunities — from the data center to the intelligent edge and across the client and mobile user experience. To learn more about Micron Technology, Inc.(MU) , visit micron.com.

© 2026 Micron Technology, Inc.(MU) All rights reserved. Information, products and/or specifications are subject to change without notice. Micron, the Micron logo and all other Micron trademarks are the property of Micron Technology, Inc.(MU) NVIDIA and the NVIDIA logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Micron Product and Technology Communications Contact:
Mengxi Liu Evensen
+1 (408) 444-2276
productandtechnology@micron.com

Micron Investor Relations Contact:
Satya Kumar
+1 (408) 450-6199
satyakumar@micron.com

1 The decrease in rack space is calculated as 720 drives x 245.76TB SSDs per 36U for 176.9PB capacity total per rack, compared to 720 drives x 44TB HDDs per 36U for 31.7PB capacity total per rack, theoretical maximum. The difference is that 5.6 times more rack space is needed for HDDs.

2 SSD and NAND comparisons are based on published data from the top five competitive suppliers of OEM data center SSDs by revenue as of March 2026, as per Forward Insights analyst report “SSD Supplier Status Q1/26.”

3 The Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD operates at 30W peak power, and 44TB HDDs at 10W peak power each. 44TB HDD power information is not available, comparisons are based on 36TB/32TB HDD peak power. Source: exos-ds2046.1-2512-en_us.pdf

4 The 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD consistently delivered higher throughput than an array of data center HDDs for AI extraction, transformation and loading (ETL), with lower latency, superior power efficiency and better scalable concurrency as tested in Micron Engineering labs with a single 245 TB Micron 6600 ION SSD against an array of 16x 16TB data center HDDs from a single HDD manufacturer.

5 MinIO object storage workload testing based on testing in Micron labs using the Warp S3 benchmark with 4MB objects with a single Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD against an array of 16x 16TB data center HDDs presented as a RAID-0/JBOD array from a single HDD manufacturer.

6 The Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD operates at 30W peak power, and 44TB HDDs at 10W peak power each. 4,069 SSDs and 22,727 HDDs are required for 1EB of storage. Energy savings are calculated as the difference between the two technologies running at maximum power for one year. 44TB HDD power information is not available, so power data is based on 32TB/36TB HDD peak power and assumes 44TB HDD power consumption will be equal to or higher than 32TB/36TB HDD. Source: exos-ds2046.1-2512-en_us.pdf

7 In one year, one tree can absorb 231KG of CO2. Tree absorption information source: The Power of One Tree – The Very Air We Breathe | Home

8 Assumes 1EB storage, all HDD and all SSD drawing 100% of their assumed or rated power 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. HDD power consumed: 1,990,973 kWh (10 watts per HDD), while 245TB 6600 ION SSD power consumption is 1,069,596 kWh (30 watts per SSD), for a difference of 921,377 kWh Based on all energy from carbon/fossil-based sources. CO2 reduction information source: Emissions – Global Energy & CO2 Status Report – Analysis – IEA

9 HVAC cooling savings based on 1W = 3.412 Btu/h.

[Elroy] Ah, so they span out SNDK to WDC owners? I didn't know that. That's fine then....

Elroy — 5/3/2026 6:46:31 PM

Ah, so they span out SNDK to WDC owners? I didn't know that.

That's fine then.

If I owned SNDK I would try to figure out when the NEW NAND fabs open (not the upgrades of legacy node fabs) and sell the stock a year before then. But I don't even know the plans for new greenfield NAND fabs.

Yes, it does seem like this "super cycle" is unprecedented. Normally Samsung would expand capacity by 20x as fast as possible to gain NAND share, but they seem focused on HBM and DRAM because those two are more profitable than NAND, which is insanely profitable.

Memory makers with 85% gross margins! Who'd have thought?

[Bargain Hunter] WDC management's decision to spin out SNDK in Q1 2025 has got to go down with th...

Bargain Hunter — 5/3/2026 5:58:13 PM

WDC management's decision to spin out SNDK in Q1 2025 has got to go down with the worst ever decisions by a management team.

Spin them out a few months before the value is about to go up 30x.

No. If you owned WDC before the spinoff your ownership was unaffected by the spinoff. You received 1 share of SNDK for each 3 shares of WDC. The remaining 20% of SNDK was still owned by WDC such that in total each WDC shareholder still owned the same amount of SNDK, albeit now partly directly and partly through WDC.

Also, the decision to spin off SNDK was taken long before Q1 2025 (see the October 2023 announcement). They spent time restructuring the company to achieve the spinoff. The spinoff was recommended by Elliott Management in May 2022 and that may have been the initial impetus.

The poor (with hindsight) decision was when WDC chose to sell about 15% of SNDK in the months following the spinoff. They did it to reduce debt but could clearly have paid off more debt by waiting (again, with hindsight).

As for the management team in question, the CEO of WDC became the CEO of SNDK so presumably was not involved in the decision to reduce the WDC holdings of SNDK from 20% to 5%.

It is important to remember that last year there was a lot of talk about "AI is just another bubble", "memory chip stocks are bad investments due to their cyclical nature" and similar sentiments. Since then, AI looks to be at least a more extended bubble, people have started to grasp the processing and memory needs of inference and agentic AI in addition to model training, the memory shortage has endured and memory chip companies are taking clear steps in the hope of avoiding the typical vicious down cycle.

Those of us fortunate enough to still own some SNDK are presumably watching in amazement and trying to understand how to play this investment. I know that I am.

[Elroy] Do you know if WDC and STX plan to open any new disk drive factories to meet the...

Elroy — 5/3/2026 5:45:44 PM

Do you know if WDC and STX plan to open any new disk drive factories to meet the crazy demand? Or do they just try to increase capacity in the drives made in current factories?

I think when disk drive capacity is unable to meet demand it is great for NAND makers, as it pushes some storage from disk into SSD.

[Sam] Western Digital Beats Earnings Estimates. The Stock Is Falling Anyway. -- Barron...

Sam — 5/3/2026 3:51:21 PM

Western Digital Beats Earnings Estimates. The Stock Is Falling Anyway. -- Barrons.com
Dow Jones Newswires May 01, 2026 04:42:00 PM ET

Western Digital surpassed Wall Street expectations with its fiscal third-quarter earnings results late Thursday, while also issuing better-than-expected quarterly guidance as the artificial intelligence craze continues to boost data- storage demand.

The stock, which has risen more than 150% this year, declined 0.6% to $431.79 on Friday, but closed well off an intraday low of $404 a share.

The hard-drive maker reported third-quarter adjusted earnings of $2.72 a share, up from $1.36 a share last year and beating the Wall Street consensus of $2.39 a share. Revenue grew 45% to $3.34 billion, above the analyst consensus call for $3.25 billion.

The results also topped Western Digital's previous guidance from late January for earnings between $2.15 a share and $ 2.45 a share with sales ranging from $3.1 billion to $3.3 billion.

For the fiscal fourth quarter, Western Digital expects revenue to grow between 36% and 44% from the year before to around $3.65 billion with a profit midpoint of $3.25 a share. Wall Street forecasts fourth-quarter profit of $2.75 a share on sales of $3.46 billion, according to FactSet.

The company also expects fourth-quarter gross margin between 51% and 52%, up sequentially from 50.5% in the third quarter.

On the strength of the third-quarter, Western Digital announced a 20% increase to its quarterly cash dividend to 15 cents a share.

"The demand drivers are clear: Virtually every AI workload, from training, inference, agentic AI to physical AI, creates data that is stored persistently and cost-efficiently on HDDs," CEO Irving Tan said in the earnings release.

However, investors appeared to have been looking for more from the earnings and guidance. Western Digital stock dropped 7.8% in premarket trading Friday before paring those losses by the close.

On Thursday, shares traded up 5.3% to $434.52 as big tech companies such as Meta Platforms raised their AI capital expenditure forecasts. Over the past 12 months, Western Digital shares have soared 891%.

Memory and data storage stocks have been on a tear this year as the AI boom has triggered a surge in demand. Western Digital shares have soared 151% through Friday's close. Seagate Technology stock is up 164% so far this year while Sandisk shares have climbed 400%. Micron Technology stock has advanced 90%.

However, the artificial-intelligence investment boom is also putting pressure on the supply of hard drives, and the manufacturing capacity of Western Digital and competitors like fellow hard-drive maker Seagate Technology.

Seagate on Tuesday bested Wall Street expectations with its third-quarter earnings and revenue results and issued fourth-quarter guidance, the initial signal the AI boom is still driving up demand for data storage.

Memory stocks tumbled earlier this week after The Wall Street Journal reported that ChatGPT developer OpenAI had missed key growth targets, triggering a selloff in stocks linked to AI computing. Stocks bounced back following Seagate's financial report.

[Sam] their decision to spin out SNDK cost WDC shareholders $150b in value. Once agai...

Sam — 5/3/2026 11:35:03 AM

their decision to spin out SNDK cost WDC shareholders $150b in value.

Once again, you are assuming that what happened would have happened.

I know you are like a dog with a bone once you get started on things like this so you can have the last word. I am not gonna continue with this line.

[Elroy] There was no guarantee that what happened would have happened. Of course. Howe...

Elroy — 5/3/2026 11:23:59 AM

There was no guarantee that what happened would have happened.

Of course. However, we'd expect the senior management of the NAND flash division to have some opinions. That's why they're there. Same with the CEO of WDC - his job is to pivot the company in the best direction. That's all he's supposed to do - make the correct company changing big decisions.

WDC management got the timing exactly wrong, and their decision to spin out SNDK cost WDC shareholders $150b in value. Spinning out SNDK was a bigger decision than probably the rest of their entire careers combined, and they got it exactly wrong.

If he were a coach he'd be fired. If he were a military general he'd be fired. As a corporate CEO he'll probably get a raise because, as you say, WDC's stock has gone up.

[Sam] Hindsight is 20/20, Elroy. There was no guarantee that what happened would have ...

Sam — 5/3/2026 11:17:31 AM

Hindsight is 20/20, Elroy. There was no guarantee that what happened would have happened.

[Elroy] That is often what happens with spin offs. That is why they do it--one piece of ...

Elroy — 5/3/2026 11:09:44 AM

That is often what happens with spin offs. That is why they do it--one piece of the business isn't being valued correctly, buried in the whole company, so it is spun off...

Well, I guess I don't know the details of the WDC-SNDK spin off.

If WDC span out 10% or 20% of SNDK (at $31 or so?) maybe your claim makes sense. I thought they span out the majority of their ownership, in which case the realization of SNDK's value as it went from $30 to $1,000 all went to the buyers of the spin out, and not to WDC shareholders.

Right?

WDC can't be happy about selling SNDK stock for $30 and then watching it go to $1,000 within a year. That's like the worst timing possible.

I mean, you'd agree that WDC would love to today own all of SNDK, and today spin out all of SNDK at $1,200, and WDC shareholders would get all that cash. Right? That would be great management. Selling any SNDK at $30 was a horrible decision.

Just because WDC's share price has increased doesn't mean the sale of SNDK three months before the memory market took off was a good idea. It's a question of what's better - what they did, or not spinning out SNDK 15 months ago and what WDC-SNDK might look like today.

[Sam] Here is another piece that compares WDC with SNDK. This is obviously an AI gener...

Sam — 5/3/2026 9:34:22 AM

Here is another piece that compares WDC with SNDK. This is obviously an AI generated piece--here is the source: tickeron.com

SNDK vs WDC

SNDK vs WDC Comparison Chart in %

SNDK - $590.59
WDC - $284.11
Feb 17, 2026

View AI-Driven Trading for SNDK, WDC

Which Stock Would AI Choose? SanDisk Corporation (SNDK) vs. Western Digital Corporation (WDC) Stock Comparison
Key Takeaways

Both SNDK and WDC have delivered massive gains driven by AI-fueled demand for data storage, with SNDK posting a year-to-date return of over 322% compared to WDC's 127%.
SNDK focuses on NAND flash and SSDs, while WDC emphasizes HDDs and broader storage solutions, creating complementary exposures in the AI data center boom.
Recent market activity shows storage stocks rallying on positive Seagate guidance, highlighting sector momentum amid supply constraints.
SNDK trades at a premium valuation with higher volatility, while WDC offers profitability and a modest dividend yield of 0.13%.
Tickeron's AI tools provide signals across such high-growth sectors, aiding traders in navigating volatile memory plays.

Introduction

SanDisk Corporation ( SNDK) and Western Digital Corporation ( WDC) are key players in the data storage industry, benefiting from surging demand for memory and storage solutions in AI data centers. This comparison analyzes their business models, recent performance, and market positioning amid tight supply chains and AI-driven growth. Traders seeking exposure to semiconductor and storage trends, as well as long-term investors eyeing tech sector leaders, will find insights into relative strengths, risks, and momentum in the current environment.

SNDK Overview and Recent Performance

SanDisk Corporation develops and sells NAND flash-based storage devices, including solid-state drives (SSDs) for PCs, data centers, and embedded applications in mobile devices and automotive sectors. In recent market activity, SNDK shares have surged dramatically, with year-to-date gains exceeding 322% and one-year returns near 3,000%, reflecting explosive investor enthusiasm for AI memory demand. The stock recently traded around $1,002, near its 52-week high of $1,070, with a market cap of approximately $148 billion. Sentiment has been bolstered by sector tailwinds like Seagate's upbeat outlook on AI storage needs and anticipation for SanDisk's upcoming earnings on April 30, amid ongoing supply tightness in memory chips. However, high volatility persists, with recent pullbacks amid broader market swings.

WDC Overview and Recent Performance

Western Digital Corporation manufactures hard disk drives (HDDs), SSDs, and data storage platforms for data centers, cloud providers, and consumer markets. WDC shares have shown robust strength in recent weeks, climbing year-to-date by 127% and over 859% in the past year, fueled by AI-related demand imbalances. Trading near $391 with a $134 billion market cap and a trailing P/E of 36.89, the stock benefits from positive analyst updates and Seagate's strong guidance lifting the sector. Key influences include improving pricing power in storage and collaborations in advanced computing, though shares remain sensitive to macroeconomic pressures and supply chain dynamics.

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Head-to-Head Comparison

SNDK specializes in high-margin NAND flash for SSDs and embedded storage, positioning it directly for AI's explosive need for fast, dense memory, while WDC's HDD focus offers capacity advantages for massive data archiving at lower costs. Growth drivers align on AI data centers, but SNDK shows superior recent momentum with triple the YTD gains of WDC, trading at higher multiples amid losses versus WDC's profitability. Risk factors include SNDK's elevated volatility and negative EPS, contrasted with WDC's dividend and beta of 1.83. Sector exposure is similar in storage, but market sentiment favors SNDK for pure-play flash upside, while WDC provides relative stability.

Tickeron AI Verdict

Tickeron's AI models currently lean toward SNDK due to its stronger trend consistency, outsized momentum in AI memory demand, and positioning ahead of key earnings catalysts. While WDC offers steadier profitability, SNDK's relative outperformance suggests higher probability of continued upside in the near term, subject to market dynamics.

The information on this webpage is provided for general informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as investment advice, a recommendation to purchase or sell any security, or an offer or solicitation related to investments. It does not consider your personal financial situation, goals, or risk profile, and all investing carries inherent risks, including the possibility of losing your entire investment. For more details, please review our full Disclaimers and Limitations.

VS

SNDK vs. WDC commentary

May 03, 2026

To compare these two companies we present long-term analysis, their fundamental ratings and make comparative short-term technical analysis which are presented below. The conclusion is SNDK is a Hold and WDC is a Hold.

COMPARISON

Comparison

May 03, 2026

Stock price -- (SNDK: $1187.00 vs. WDC: $431.52)

Brand notoriety: SNDK: Not notable vs. WDC: Notable

Both companies represent the Computer Processing Hardware industry

Current volume relative to the 65-day Moving Average: SNDK: 163% vs. WDC: 201%

Market capitalization -- SNDK: $0 vs. WDC: $146.3B

SNDK [@Computer Processing Hardware] is valued at $0. WDC’s [@Computer Processing Hardware] market capitalization is $146.3B. The market cap for tickers in the [@Computer Processing Hardware] industry ranges from $217.46B to $0. The average market capitalization across the [@Computer Processing Hardware] industry is $16.6B.

Long-Term Analysis

It is best to consider a long-term outlook for a ticker by using Fundamental Analysis (FA) ratings. The rating of 1 to 100, where 1 is best and 100 is worst, is divided into thirds. The first third (a green rating of 1-33) indicates that the ticker is undervalued; the second third (a grey number between 34 and 66) means that the ticker is valued fairly; and the last third (red number of 67 to 100) reflects that the ticker is undervalued. We use an FA Score to show how many ratings show the ticker to be undervalued (green) or overvalued (red).

SNDK’s FA Score shows that 1 FA rating(s) are green while WDC’s FA Score has 4 green FA rating(s).

SNDK’s FA Score: 1 green, 4 red.
WDC’s FA Score: 4 green, 1 red.

According to our system of comparison, WDC is a better buy in the long-term than SNDK.

Short-Term Analysis

It is best to consider a short-term outlook for a ticker by using Technical Analysis (TA) indicators. We use Odds of Success as the percentage of outcomes which confirm successful trade signals in the past.

If the Odds of Success (the likelihood of the continuation of a trend) for each indicator are greater than 50%, then the generated signal is confirmed. A green percentage from 90% to 51% indicates that the ticker is in a bullish trend. A red percentage from 90% - 51% indicates that the ticker is in a bearish trend. All grey percentages are below 50% and are considered not to confirm the trend signal.

SNDK’s TA Score shows that 5 TA indicator(s) are bullish while WDC’s TA Score has 5 bullish TA indicator(s).

SNDK’s TA Score: 5 bullish, 4 bearish.
WDC’s TA Score: 5 bullish, 4 bearish.

According to our system of comparison, both SNDK and WDC are a good buy in the short-term.

Price Growth

SNDK (@Computer Processing Hardware) experienced ? +19.91% price change this week, while WDC (@Computer Processing Hardware) price change was +6.81% for the same time period.

The average weekly price growth across all stocks in the @Computer Processing Hardware industry was +0.54%. For the same industry, the average monthly price growth was +16.47%, and the average quarterly price growth was +7.36%.

Reported Earning Dates

WDC is expected to report earnings on Aug 05, 2026.

Industries' Descriptions@Computer Processing Hardware (+0.54% weekly)Computer Processing Hardware industry produces central processing unit, monitor, keyboard, computer data storage devices, and graphics card. Business activity and economic growth are potential drivers of this industry – if more businesses are growing or flourishing, so would their investments in computer equipment. Dell Technologies, Inc, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., NCR Corporation are key producers of computer processing hardware.

SUMMARIES

A.I.dvisor published
a Summary for SNDK with price predictions.

OPEN

A.I.dvisor published
a Summary for WDC with price predictions.

OPEN

FUNDAMENTALS

Fundamentals

SNDK YTD gains are higher at: 400.042 vs. WDC (150.610).

	SNDK	WDC	SNDK / WDC
Capitalization	N/A	146B	-
EBITDA	N/A	4.37B	-
Gain YTD	400.042	150.610	266%
P/E Ratio	N/A	25.82	-
Revenue	N/A	10.7B	-
Total Cash	N/A	4.04B	-
Total Debt	N/A	4.66B	-

FUNDAMENTALS RATINGS

SNDK vs WDC: Fundamental Ratings

OUTLOOK RATING 1..100	42	36
VALUATION overvalued / fair valued / undervalued 1..100	15 Undervalued	70 Overvalued
PROFIT vs RISK RATING 1..100	100	3
SMR RATING 1..100	100	24
PRICE GROWTH RATING 1..100	34	1
P/E GROWTH RATING 1..100	100	9
SEASONALITY SCORE 1..100	1	50

SNDK

WDC

Tickeron ratings are formulated such that a rating of 1 designates the most successful stocks in a given industry, while a rating of 100 points to the least successful stocks for that industry.

SNDK's Valuation (15) in the Computer Peripherals industry is somewhat better than the same rating for WDC (70). This means that SNDK’s stock grew somewhat faster than WDC’s over the last 12 months.

WDC's Profit vs Risk Rating (3) in the Computer Peripherals industry is significantly better than the same rating for SNDK (100). This means that WDC’s stock grew significantly faster than SNDK’s over the last 12 months.

WDC's SMR Rating (24) in the Computer Peripherals industry is significantly better than the same rating for SNDK (100). This means that WDC’s stock grew significantly faster than SNDK’s over the last 12 months.

WDC's Price Growth Rating (1) in the Computer Peripherals industry is somewhat better than the same rating for SNDK (34). This means that WDC’s stock grew somewhat faster than SNDK’s over the last 12 months.

WDC's P/E Growth Rating (9) in the Computer Peripherals industry is significantly better than the same rating for SNDK (100). This means that WDC’s stock grew significantly faster than SNDK’s over the last 12 months.

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

Technical Analysis

RSI ODDS (%)	3 days ago 77%	3 days ago 67%
Stochastic ODDS (%)	3 days ago 86%	3 days ago 67%
Momentum ODDS (%)	3 days ago 83%	3 days ago 87%
MACD ODDS (%)	3 days ago 90%	3 days ago 82%
TrendWeek ODDS (%)	3 days ago 90%	3 days ago 79%
TrendMonth ODDS (%)	3 days ago 88%	3 days ago 81%
Advances ODDS (%)	3 days ago 90%	4 days ago 79%
Declines ODDS (%)	13 days ago 60%	6 days ago 68%
BollingerBands ODDS (%)	3 days ago 72%	3 days ago 67%
Aroon ODDS (%)	3 days ago 90%	3 days ago 84%

SNDKWDC

[Sam] That is often what happens with spin offs. That is why they do it--one piece of ...

Sam — 5/3/2026 9:22:50 AM

That is often what happens with spin offs. That is why they do it--one piece of the business isn't being valued correctly, buried in the whole company, so it is spun off. There was no guarantee that WDC's stock would have done what Sandisk's stock has done if the spinoff had not happened. It's not like WDC has done badly since then. And it isn't as though WDC hasn't participated in the rise in Sandisk's stock.

Here is an AI generated summary of where they are at:

SanDisk (SNDK) and Western Digital (WDC) are both high-performing data storage stocks in 2026, driven by AI demand, with SNDK (post-2025 spin-off) acting as a high-growth flash NAND pure-play, while WDC offers a more diversified, profitable mix of hard drives (HDD) and flash. As of April 2026, SNDK has shown higher volatility and gains (+300% YTD) compared to WDC (+127% YTD). [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Key Comparison (As of May 2026):

Stock Performance: SNDK has significantly outperformed, with over 3,000% growth in the past year compared to WDC's ~1,000% rally.
Business Focus: SNDK is specialized in high-margin NAND flash and SSDs, making it a pure AI data play. WDC has a broader portfolio, including traditional HDDs and a larger enterprise storage presence.
Valuation & Profitability: SNDK trades at a premium valuation (often higher forward multiples) due to aggressive growth expectations, while WDC offers better current net margins (55%–61%) and a small dividend.
Outlook: Both are heavily backed by AI infrastructure demand. SNDK is considered more aggressive, while WDC is seen as more stable. [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

Which to Choose?

SNDK: Better if seeking maximum growth and higher risk, focusing on flash storage demand.
WDC: Better if seeking a balance of AI growth with better profitability and a dividend.
A combined approach (50/50 split) is suggested by analysts to hedge bets on flash vs. HDD dominance in AI. [ 1, 2, 3, 4]

Here is an article on the two of them from last January:
finance.yahoo.com

[Elroy] WDC management's decision to spin out SNDK in Q1 2025 has got to go down with th...

Elroy — 5/2/2026 10:34:06 PM

WDC management's decision to spin out SNDK in Q1 2025 has got to go down with the worst ever decisions by a management team.

Spin them out a few months before the value is about to go up 30x.

Did anyone get fired?

[Sam] Certainly (b) is true but I'm not certain about (a).

Sam — 5/2/2026 5:47:51 PM

[Bargain Hunter] WDC confirmed in Thursday's earnings call that they have not yet sold the remain...

Bargain Hunter — 5/2/2026 4:49:23 PM

WDC confirmed in Thursday's earnings call that they have not yet sold the remaining ~7.5M shares of SNDK. Now they say before the end of calendar 2026. This explains why there has not been a 13G filing.

SNDK closing price on Feb 20: $649.97. Yesterday's close: $1187. They are now planning some kind of swap strategy to avoid tax but I think they could afford to pay the tax, if necessary, assuming the price doesn't plummet in the interim.

==============================================================================

Contents of original post (I tried to copy/paste/quote it but the quote function screws up the formatting and I'm too lazy to fix it):

As of the end of WDC's Q1 2026 (Oct 3rd), WDC still owned about 7.5M shares of SNDK. They have stated that they intend to dispose of the entire stake by Feb 21, 2026.

In the SNDK stock price gyrations of the last few weeks, there have been a few times when sudden drops could have been related to sales by WDC or its agents.

If WDC sales during Nov reach about 289K, that will drop their holding below 5%.

My understanding (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong) is that:

a) they need to file a 13G within 2 business days of the end of any calendar month in which their holdings change by 5% or more (currently about 275K).

b) after a filing indicating less than 5% ownership, they no longer need to file further 13G forms.

I would think that there would be some benefit to selling enough this month to get below 5% such that in future they would not need to file again, thereby making it a bit harder to guess and front run their strategy. There will, of course, be some disclosure in their Q2 earnings but the numbers would be about a month out of date by then.

[Bargain Hunter] I tried to re-post my message from yesterday because the links didn't work. I c...

Bargain Hunter — 5/1/2026 6:26:19 PM

I tried to re-post my message from yesterday because the links didn't work. I couldn't figure it out. The first link was supposed to be to SI message 35324141.

[Bargain Hunter] File this one under many a true word is spoken in jest. In Nov 2025, I said (in...

Bargain Hunter — 4/30/2026 5:39:35 PM

File this one under many a true word is spoken in jest.

In Nov 2025, I said (in siliconinvestor.com

So the AI players keep announcing ever higher capital spending plans. People worry that they are going to build too much capacity. [Start tongue-in-cheek font] But maybe that doesn't reflect increasing numbers or sizes of AI data centers, just the expected higher costs for the HBM, HDDs and SSDs. [End tongue-in-cheek font]

Yesterday (in finance.yahoo.com

Meta was the first to announce its plans for 2026, raising its capex forecast to $125 billion to $145 billion, up $10 billion at both ends. In its earnings release, Meta said this increased forecast is due to “expectations for higher component pricing this year and, to a lesser extent, additional data center costs to support future year capacity.” Meta stock fell about 6% following this report.

[Sam] STX up sharply AH, to $657 from $579. WDC sharply up to $422 in sympathy. And SN...

Sam — 4/28/2026 4:58:59 PM

STX up sharply AH, to $657 from $579. WDC sharply up to $422 in sympathy. And SNDK also up to 1030.

[Elroy] I'll follow and comment on that board, but I've got limited knowledge of LITE. ...

Elroy — 3/29/2026 7:00:50 PM

I'll follow and comment on that board, but I've got limited knowledge of LITE. Want to learn more.

[Bargain Hunter] I tried to revive the LITE board back in December: Message 35370009 Nobody ste...

Bargain Hunter — 3/29/2026 6:46:04 PM

I tried to revive the LITE board back in December:

Message 35370009

Nobody stepped up. Not surprising since that was only the 4th post and there are only 9 subject marks.

Incidentally, LITE closed at $395 that day and $702 on Friday.

[Elroy] Speaking of LITE I've held COHR since last summer and more recently added a bit ...

Elroy — 3/29/2026 9:10:04 AM

Speaking of LITE I've held COHR since last summer and more recently added a bit of LITE.

I'm curious if anyone knows the simple high level distictions between the two firms.

[Bargain Hunter] Sandisk was for years my major holding. I made good money on it when it was sold...

Bargain Hunter — 3/28/2026 4:24:06 PM

Sandisk was for years my major holding. I made good money on it when it was sold to WDC. I almost bought it back when it was spun off, thought about it two or three times, both at around 49 and again around 70. Never bought a share.

I goofed by selling all my WDC soon after the spinoff. I did buy some more SNDK and some MU with part of the proceeds, meaning to ease the rest in over time. I looked pretty stupid when WDC soared before the memory stocks. And again when I sold some SNDK after "only" tripling and then seeing it triple again.

I want to take a moment to thank all the people who used to participate in meaningful discussions about the technology behind SNDK and related stocks back before such discussions were largely discouraged by troll-like behavior.

In particular, I want to thank whoever it was who mentioned LRCX and the role it would play in deposition and etch and the increasing importance of those functions in 3D NAND. These days LRCX and SNDK are my biggest holdings.

I would also like to mention LITE for amusement value. I have a few shares that I received when JDSU split into LITE and VIAV. The amusement aspect is that if you look at the Yahoo statistics page it shows 113% owned by institutions. The number could be incorrect. Or it could reflect some kind of hedging strategy involving shorting stock to be issued in future. Or it could indicate that a bunch of shares are short in a way that there needs to be a short squeeze at some point. The percentage hasn't changed much recently.

[Sam] Morgan Stanley Says Memory Stocks 'Cooling Off'—SanDisk, Micron Keep Defying Gr...

Sam — 3/17/2026 4:17:55 PM

Morgan Stanley Says Memory Stocks 'Cooling Off'—SanDisk, Micron Keep Defying Gravity

BENZINGA 6:22 AM ET 3/17/2026

SNDK	720.17	+16.54 (+2.3507%)
MU	461.69	+19.89 (+4.502%)
STX	421.09	+22.31 (+5.5946%)
WDC	313.81	+27.6 (+9.6433%)
QUOTES AS OF 04:00:00 PM ET 03/17/2026

Symbol Last Price Change

Morgan Stanley's Chief U.S. Equity Strategist Mike Wilson claims the broader equity market correction is nearing its end, but his recent warning that memory stocks have “cooled off” stands in stark contrast to their actual breakneck performance.

Market’s Worst Might Be Behind Us During his latest market commentary, Wilson explained that Wall Street has been digesting underlying risks for months. He noted that while the market previously saw “concentrated returns” in areas like emerging markets, industrial metals, and memory stocks, the landscape has recently shifted.

“More recently, the dollar has rallied and these same areas have noticeably cooled off,” Wilson stated.

He further cautioned investors to prepare for a “final downdraft” or a “capitulatory shock,” potentially triggered by hawkish Federal Reserve policies, backward-looking inflation concerns, or escalating global conflicts.

Defying The Downdraft Despite Wilson’s assertion that the memory/storage sector is cooling, current market data tells a radically different and highly lucrative story for shareholders.

SanDisk Corporation (SNDK) is leading the charge. The pure-play flash memory powerhouse boasts a staggering 19.52% gain over just the last five days and an explosive 196.42% year-to-date return. Over the past 12 months, SanDisk(SNDK) has skyrocketed an astonishing 1,183.53%.

Micron Technology (MU) firmly mirrors this bullish momentum. Defying any signs of a slowdown, Micron posted a 13.48% five-day leap and remains up over 338% for the trailing one-year period.

<figure class="wp-block-table is-style-stripes">

Memory Stocks	5-Day Performance	1-Month Performance	YTD Performance	1-Year Performance
SanDisk Corp.(SNDK)	19.52%	12.30%	196.42%	1183.53%
Seagate Technology Holdings PLC(STX)	6.53%	-6.39%	44.81%	353.67%
Western Digital Corp.(WDC)	9.22%	1.64%	66.14%	542.74%
Micron Technology Inc.(MU)	13.48%	7.32%	54.79%	338.34%

</figure>

A Broader Sector Surge The aggressive market momentum extends well beyond the two primary frontrunners. Legacy data storage titans are also riding the undeniable wave. Western Digital(WDC) and Seagate Technology(STX)have posted solid five-day returns of 9.22% and 6.53%, respectively.

Furthermore, both companies maintain massive triple-digit one-year gains, completely contradicting the narrative of a sector-wide pullback.

Wilson urged investors to “be ready to add risk in anticipation of the bull market resuming” once the broader market hits its definitive low.

However, for investors closely tracking the memory space, the data suggests the expected pullback never materialized—and the sector is actively rewarding those who are already invested.

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio">

</figure> Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

[Sam] SK hynix and SanDisk announce new High Bandwidth Flash — speedy HBF standard ...

Sam — 3/1/2026 7:42:53 AM

SK hynix and SanDisk announce new High Bandwidth Flash — speedy HBF standard is targeted at inference AI servers | Tom's Hardware
Going for the Goldilocks zone of data transfer speed.
By Bruno Ferreira published 3 days ago

Typical NAND chips present in SSDs have steadily evolved in speed and capacity over time, with contemporary server-grade units capable of reaching 28 GB/s per unit. Somehow, that's still not enough for the AI world. In turn, SK Hynix and SanDisk have jointly announced HBF, or High Bandwidth Flash, for the inference servers of tomorrow.

continues at tomshardware.com

[Sam] Hard drives already sold out for this year – AI to blame Oh snap! The hypersca...

Sam — 2/22/2026 11:46:11 PM

Hard drives already sold out for this year – AI to blame
Oh snap! The hyperscalers bought all the HDDs
Dan Robinson
Fri 20 Feb 2026 // 14:00 UTC

Hard drive manufacturers have already sold all the units they will make this year, and it looks like the AI infrastructure boom is to blame, with hyperscalers soaking up all the high-capacity storage.

Seagate and Western Digital, two of the Big Three makers of rotating disk drives, confirmed during recent earnings conference calls that they have already flogged all of their manufacturing output.

Western Digital chief Tiang Yew Tan told analysts "We're pretty much sold out for calendar '26. We have firm purchase orders with our top seven customers. And we've also established long term agreements with two of them for calendar year '27 and one of them for calendar year '28."

Seagate CEO Dave Mosley said on his own company’s call: "Our nearline capacity is fully allocated through calendar year 2026, and we expect to begin accepting orders for the first half of calendar year 2027 in the coming months… additionally, multiple cloud customers are discussing their demand growth projections for calendar 2028, underscoring that supply assurance remains their highest priority."

Great for WD and Seagate. Not so much for eveveryone else.

It is understood that the third major disk producer, Toshiba, is likely to be in a similar situation. We asked the drive maker and will update if we get an answer.

Hard drives have pretty much been displaced from everyday PCs and laptops, but the makers continue to bump up their capacities, making them attractive for applications requiring large volumes of data storage at low cost – such as cloud storage and AI training. Western Digital recently announced it will ship 44 TB drives this year, for example, with a roadmap to 100 TB by 2029.

What are the implications for this impending shortage? "In my view this means no meaningful open production remains for discretionary buyers except the hyperscalers," said Sid Nag, President and Chief Research Officer at Tekonyx.

"I am guessing these include locked-in purchase agreements extending into 2027 and 2028 for certain customers including those building AI datacenters. So there should be no impact to that business. This also implies HDD manufacturing capacity is now almost exclusively prioritized for large AI/cloud players because of predictable, high-volume demand," Nag told us.

"This will, however, impact the mid-size market who depend on server technology."

Omdia Senior Research Director for Enterprise Infrastructure Vlad Galabov agreed.

"I think it will be a very tough year for the standard enterprise general purpose server and for enterprise storage. We have downgraded our forecast for those markets," Galabov told The Register.

Despite this, Omdia raised its overall 2026 server spend forecast to $590 billion and its datacenter capex forecast to more than $1 trillion because the top ten cloud providers keep upping their investment plans.

Corporate IT projects will likely take a hit if they were counting on using hard drives as a capacity tier in their storage plans, but there are already shortages of DRAM and NAND flash silicon, the latter used in solid state drives (SSDs) – all due to AI-driven demand putting a strain on supply chains.

"We are seeing shortages of memory, storage and even CPU silicon and all of these will be dynamically affecting each other for some significant time based on announced capex spend and (datacenter) land leases," said IDC's senior research director for European Enterprise Infrastructure, Andrew Buss.

"The growth of AI demands storage, and lots of it, and also networking to move the stored data around, so expect there to also be high-performance networking shortages as well going forwards. And with next-generation Rubin GPUs apparently needing 20TB+ of fast SSD storage capacity per GPU, this will become even more acute," Buss told us.

"This has been consuming large amounts of fast flash-based NVMe SSDs, and the increase in price and shortage of media is now encouraging many who need storage to reconsider HDDs. We would expect hybrid flash arrays to have a resurgence, but also HDD only arrays where the traffic patterns are suitable," he added.

So it looks like it might be a bad year for a server refresh, unless you happen to be one of the hyperscalers, with shortages and price hikes affecting many components.

Omdia forecasts the top ten cloud service providers (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, CoreWeave, ByteDance, xAI, Alibaba, and Tencent) to account for more than 70 percent of the server capex this year and AI-optimized servers for 80 percent of the total server spend. ®

theregister.com

[Sam] Western Digital to sell partial stake in Sandisk for $3.17 billion to cut debt ...

Sam — 2/18/2026 10:53:40 PM

Western Digital to sell partial stake in Sandisk for $3.17 billion to cut debt
Reuters
Wed, February 18, 2026 at 1:21 AM EST 1 min read

finance.yahoo.com

In this article:

WDC
+4.38%

SNDK
+1.66%

The ?secondary share sale, announced by Sandisk on Wednesday, is priced at a 7.7% discount to the company's last closing price and involves swapping 5.8 million shares for debt held by affiliates of J.P. Morgan and BofA Securities.

Following the share sale, Western Digital's stake in Sandisk will be reduced to about 1.7 million shares, which is worth nearly $1 billion, according to Reuters calculations.

Western Digital intends to sell the rest of the shares eventually, with an aim to reduce its debt pile of $4.69 billion as of January 2026.

Sandisk shares fell about 3% in premarket trading on the news, while Western Digital rose nearly 2%.

Western Digital completed the spinoff of Sandisk last year, and has been streamlining its business to become a pure-play HDD firm.

Last month, the company forecast quarterly revenue above Wall Street estimates, as the rapid growth of artificial intelligence technologies and hyperscaler efforts to scale up AI infrastructure fuel robust demand for its products.

Sandisk last month had also forecast quarterly results above estimates, driven by a surge in demand for its data storage products.

[Sam] Western Digital is already sold out of hard drives for all of 2026 — chief says...

Sam — 2/16/2026 10:25:46 PM

Western Digital is already sold out of hard drives for all of 2026 — chief says some long-term agreements for 2027 and 2028 already in place
By Jowi Morales last updated 14 hours ago
Will HDDs follow RAM and SSDs when it comes to price increases?

tomshardware.com

[Sam] Cantor Fitzgerald and Goldman Sachs Lift Western Digital (WDC) Price Targets A...

Sam — 2/16/2026 10:12:21 PM

Cantor Fitzgerald and Goldman Sachs Lift Western Digital (WDC) Price Targets
Ali Ahmed
Mon, February 16, 2026 at 7:41 AM EST 2 min read

Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC) is one of the 15 AI Stocks That Are Skyrocketing. On February 4, Cantor Fitzgerald increased its price target on Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) from $325 to $420 and kept its Overweight rating after the company’s Innovation Day event held in New York City.

During the event, company management talked about technology advances, product roadmaps, and shared an updated financial model.

Cantor Fitzgerald and Goldman Sachs Lift Western Digital (WDC) Price Targets Cantor Fitzgerald pointed out that Western Digital Corporation’s (NASDAQ:WDC) expected growth and profitability are “significantly better than the company (and industry) had previously projected.” The firm now forecasts that the company’s earnings per share for calendar year 2028 could range between $19 and $32.

Earlier, on February 3, Goldman Sachs also raised its price target on Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) from $220 to $250 and maintained its Neutral rating. The company confirmed that its HAMR product rollout is still on track for the first half of 2027.

Additionally, Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) said that one more customer has entered the qualification stage for its HAMR solutions. Goldman Sachs raised its 2026-2028 non-GAAP earnings per share estimates for the company by an average of 22% after the company updated its long-term guidance.

finance.yahoo.com

[Sam] Phison CEO warns: This is the last memory supercycle—now is the opportunity AI-...

Sam — 2/16/2026 2:22:22 PM

Phison CEO warns: This is the last memory supercycle—now is the opportunity

AI-Driven Supercycle! KS Pua: In 30–40 Years in the Industry, This Only Happens Once in a Lifetime!

In November 2025, Phison Electronics (????) CEO KS Pua (???) appeared on the «?????» interview, and that day Phison's stock price was 1,000 TWD. Three months later today, as he sat in the same chair again, the stock price had already broken through 2,000. Host Chen Ningkuan (???) opened with a smile: "Last time after the interview it hit 2,000—how much will it be after this one?" But the news Pua brought was even more unsettling than a doubling in share price.

He walked through a simple calculation. NVIDIA's Vera Rubin GPU, set to ship by year-end, requires over 20TB of SSD per unit. Assuming 10 million units are sold, that alone amounts to 200 exabytes (EB).

Last year, total global NAND Flash production was only 1,000 to 1,100 exabytes. A single chip model could consume 20% of the world's entire Flash production capacity.

"And this is just the GPU itself," Pua added. "The data generated after these machines are put to use also needs to be stored—and that hasn't even been factored in yet."

AI Is a Necessity—and It's Only Been Three and a Half Years

In his previous interview, Pua asserted that AI is a "necessity (??)." At the time, the market was skeptical, but three months later, his judgment has become market consensus: storage is definitively in massive shortage, and it will remain so for a long time.

His time horizon is longer than most. Every growth driver in the semiconductor industry has had a long run. Consumer electronics was the first generation; PCs have persisted for over 40 years and are still here; smartphones have lasted more than 20 years; the internet nearly 20 years as well. AI, counting from 2022, is only three and a half years old. "If past trajectories are any guide, it will run for a very long time." He drew a comparison with VR: "When VR was red-hot, I felt it was unrealistic—because it wasn't a necessity. AI is a necessity."

Where's the difference? Follow the money. The combined capital expenditure of the four major U.S. cloud service providers (CSPs) is projected to exceed $600 billion this year, with some spending over $100 billion and others up to $200 billion. All of it is being poured into data center buildouts—buying TSMC wafers, NVIDIA GPUs, and storage—to the point where even glass substrates are in short supply.

$600 billion is higher than the GDP of most countries. And that's just one year's spending.

Three Years of Cash Upfront

Then Pua dropped a bombshell.

A Flash manufacturer (??) is now demanding that buyers prepay three years' worth of cash before it will supply them. Three years. Prepaid. Cash. The host immediately responded: "Even TSMC doesn't ask NVIDIA to prepay three years of cash!"

This is something Pua has never encountered in his decades in the electronics industry. The manufacturer's attitude is simple: take it or leave it—there are plenty of others in line behind you. It is now a complete seller's market.

Phison needs to raise capital again because of this. Having secured a large volume of long-term contracts, the company must lock in upstream supply. Pua revealed that Phison's paid-in capital is NT$2.2 billion, but the working capital required this year could reach $10 to $20 billion (approximately NT$50 billion)—for prepayments, inventory stockpiling, R&D expansion, and fulfilling long-term delivery commitments to customers.

He also mentioned one detail: yesterday, in a meeting with a supplier, Phison proactively offered to prepay, and the other side responded with one line: "We don't need money." Then how about supplying us with product? "We don't have any."

Pua then pivoted, saying he judged that the supplier's biggest concern was actually its market capitalization, and proceeded to walk them through Phison's full AI edge development solution from start to finish. "Within an hour of hearing it, the contract was signed—and we even got a discount on the price."

The manufacturers aren't short on cash—they're short on new narratives. What Phison can offer is exactly that: a new story powered by technology.

Why Capacity Expansion Can Never Catch Up

With shortages this severe, why aren't the manufacturers expanding capacity with everything they've got?

"The past five years scared them." From 2020 to 2025, the storage industry endured a brutal loss cycle, and every manufacturer's stance on expansion has become extremely conservative. Pua used the phrase "extraordinary restraint (????)" twice to describe it.

Even if they wanted to expand, physical limitations stand in the way. As 3D NAND stacking grows ever taller, capital expenditure keeps rising while room for cost reduction keeps shrinking. In the old 2D era, adding a single scanner could double production capacity, making price collapses easy—but 3D is no longer that simple.

Equipment is another bottleneck. The number of critical semiconductor equipment suppliers worldwide can be counted on one hand. "Everyone is fighting over equipment, and it's one slot per machine." Physical construction takes 8 to 12 months, but factoring in equipment lead times, debugging, and yield stabilization, the entire process takes at least two years from start to finish. "Even if you committed to spending whatever it takes on January 1st, it would still take two years. At minimum."

Micron held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new Flash fab in Singapore last month, but it won't be operational until 2028 at the earliest. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Kioxia are on similar timelines for expansion. Pua predicted that SK Hynix will soon follow with its own fab expansion announcement—because it has no choice but to keep up. But everyone is constrained by the same equipment and time bottlenecks.

The industry's prevailing view, therefore, is that the storage shortage will persist until at least 2027. And one manufacturer's internal report is even more alarming: shortages through 2030.

Pua pointed out a fact that many overlook: "All of the current shortages have been caused solely by U.S. cloud demand. China's cloud hasn't caught up yet, edge hasn't caught up, and education hasn't caught up." Three massive demand segments haven't even started yet—the end of this shortage is nowhere in sight.

The Season of Sacrifice for Consumer Electronics

AI's battle for storage is triggering a chain reaction crisis in consumer electronics.

For smartphones, global production is expected to decline by 200 to 250 million units this year. PCs are also projected to fall, though the magnitude remains unclear. TVs are hit the hardest—in a $300 TV, storage costs alone have surged from $1.50 to $20, blowing up the BOM (bill of materials) and making it impossible to sustain sales at original price points.

Storage accounts for only 5–6% of a server's BOM, making price increases absorbable. But in smartphones, storage already exceeds 20% of the BOM. "When system customers tell me they can't raise prices, I tell them they'll have to take the loss. There's no other way." The result is that consumer electronics shipments are being forcibly compressed, and some product lines may cease production entirely.

Pua's prediction: "In the second half of this year, you'll see a lot of casualties." System vendors and consumer electronics companies unable to source materials—some will go under immediately. "In the past, when electronics broke, you threw them away. For the next one to two years, when they break, people will get them repaired."

But he also sees the other side. After consumer electronics demand is suppressed for two to three years, the moment supply begins to ease, pent-up replacement demand will come flooding back all at once, creating a massive market vacuum. "Whoever uses this period to build up their capabilities, make good money, and sharpen their technology—when that moment comes, it will all be theirs."

Surviving isn't enough. You have to survive comfortably.

China Hasn't Even Entered the Game Yet

Among the geopolitical variables in storage, China is a severely underestimated factor.

In response to concerns that capacity expansion by YMTC and CXMT could shock the market and drive down prices, Pua answered in one line: "The people saying that are dreaming."

There are three reasons. First, expansion takes time—building from nothing to something cannot be done in less than a year and a half. Second, Chinese manufacturers' output could add 3–5% to global supply, but the shortage stands at 10–20%, making it nowhere near enough. Third, and most critically, China's own demand is right there. Global consumer electronics are primarily manufactured in China, and without storage fabs, production simply cannot operate—which directly impacts employment. "No matter how much they produce, they need to save themselves first."

Pricing tells the same story. Pua revealed that the most aggressive Flash pricing right now comes first from an American company and second from a Chinese company. Everyone has demand, and everyone is scrambling.

China's AI cloud buildout hasn't truly begun yet. Only two countries in the world have the capability to build out cloud infrastructure at scale—the U.S. and China—and the current shortage has been driven almost entirely by the American side. Once China follows, it becomes "another wave of shortages." Beyond the cloud, edge AI demand hasn't materialized yet either, and education hasn't caught up.

"Some say China's capacity expansion will crash the market—I actually wish it would," Pua said. "Because demand is so massive that no matter how much you buy, it's never enough."

We Don't Grow Rice—We Process It

In the midst of this mega-shortage, Phison's positioning is highly unique.

Pua offered an analogy: "We don't grow rice. We buy rice and process it." Phison doesn't produce storage—it purchases storage and turns it into modules and system products, creating added value through controller technology and custom design.

Why does this matter? Because the fate of pure module companies is entirely dictated by storage price cycles. During upcycles, they feast on low-cost inventory and celebrate. But once prices plateau, margins evaporate—and when prices fall, they even go into the red.

"When DRAM costs one dollar and you sell it for ten, you're happy. When you buy at ten and sell at ten-fifty, you're left with a 5% margin. If ten-fifty accidentally drops to eight, your margin is negative 20%."

Over the past five years, Phison weathered two and a half boom-bust cycles while maintaining gross margins at 30% ±3%. Same materials, different value.

The most extreme example is space. Phison's storage products went to Mars in 2020, began orbital testing in 2021, operated in orbit in 2022, and landed on the lunar surface in early 2025. The certification process was extraordinarily demanding—radiation, extreme temperatures, automatic recovery after power loss, among other tests. Pua even took his team to Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in the middle of the night to borrow X-ray equipment to simulate space radiation environments.

How many units were sold? Very few. Has it been profitable? Not yet. So why do it?

"I tell customers: if it works in outer space, what are you worried about using it on Earth?" What space certification delivered was trust on the ground. Phison is now shipping modules in volume to U.S. CSPs and space-related companies.

Another new battleground is the AI PC. DRAM is in severe shortage, and running AI on a PC theoretically requires 32GB, 64GB, or even 128GB of DRAM. 128GB alone costs $2,000—more expensive than the PC itself. Phison's solution is to combine a small amount of DRAM (8–16GB) with its proprietary Flash solution, enabling every PC to run AI.

"I've been telling this story for a long time, but nobody believed it," Pua said. "But now that DRAM has become so scarce it's practically sold out, the alternative has suddenly become a necessity." From March to June of this year, the company will progressively roll out campaigns and success stories. If the market buys in, adoption on the consumer end could spread very quickly. Phison also plans to establish a software partner alliance in Taiwan, pairing with AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA PC processors to build a complete ecosystem from hardware to software.

Once in a Lifetime

As the interview neared its end, the host posed one big question: in 30 to 40 years in the industry, have you ever seen a shortage like this? "Once in a lifetime. It's never happened before, and it probably never will again."

His explanation is that AI's slope is like the sun. It took over 20 years for PCs to go from zero to mass adoption. From the iPhone to smartphone ubiquity took nearly a decade. But AI has produced multiple generations of products in just three years. NVIDIA is now launching a new model every year—Intel used to take two to four years per cycle—a pace several times faster, and the supply chain simply cannot keep up.

This reminded Pua of the dotcom bubble. Back then, the bubble was built on startups propped up by shareholders, generating no revenue—when shareholders pulled out, it burst. But the internet itself was real. After the infrastructure was laid, Google rose in 2004 and e-commerce transformed retail. AI is following the same path, only at ten times the speed.

"If it weren't a necessity, who would be paying this kind of money?"

Phison's response is equally aggressive. R&D spending will increase by at least 50% this year. January revenue tripled year-over-year and grew 25% month-over-month. The company has invested 15 years in automotive, 6 years in space, and 7 years in enterprise—and continues to invest across every business line. One lesson from TSMC's success: focus on one thing, put in the effort every day, every year, and when the time comes, the rewards follow naturally. "Mastery doesn't come from two or three flashy moves—it takes 30 to 50 years of cultivating your inner strength."

But Pua won't talk about next year. "If you can't survive this year, there's no point discussing next year. Every quarter is a new milestone for us. We'll break through this wall first, and then tell everyone what comes next."

In his previous interview, every one of Pua's predictions was validated. This time, the message he brings is even more severe: the pain of Q1 is only the beginning—the real shock comes at year-end. Consumer electronics will be sacrificed. Companies will go bankrupt. China hasn't entered the game yet. Edge hasn't even started. In this once-in-a-lifetime supercycle, those who can survive will enjoy unprecedented growth in the years ahead.

But there's one prerequisite: you have to survive this year first.

This article was written by reprocessing an interview conducted between the Phison CEO and a broadcast program.

Source:
youtu.be

x.com

[Sam] Sandisk outlines $4.4B–$4.8B Q3 revenue target and projects structurally higher ...

Sam — 1/30/2026 11:33:22 AM

Sandisk outlines $4.4B–$4.8B Q3 revenue target and projects structurally higher margins amid AI-driven NAND demand
Jan. 30, 2026 2:53 AM ET Sandisk Corporation (SNDK) StockAI-Generated Earnings Calls Insights

Earnings Call Insights: Sandisk Corporation (SNDK) Q2 2026

Management View

CEO David V. Goeckeler stated revenue was $3 billion, up 31% sequentially, with non-GAAP earnings per share of $6.20. He commented, "Artificial intelligence continues to drive a step change in demand with data center and edge workloads expanding system complexity and storage content requirements." Goeckeler emphasized that NAND is now indispensable to global storage needs, leading to evolving commercial relationships with customers and a push toward multiyear agreements to secure supply and pricing certainty.
Goeckeler indicated major product milestones, including the qualification of PCIe Gen5 high-performance TLC drives at a second hyperscaler and progress toward additional hyperscaler qualifications. He noted, "Our BiCS8 QLC storage class product, codenamed Stargate, continues advancing through qualification with 2 major hyperscalers and is expected to begin shipping for revenue within the next several quarters."
In the consumer segment, Goeckeler highlighted the launch of the Sandisk Extreme Fit USB-C flash drive and expanded licensing with Crayola and FIFA. He also mentioned the rebranding of WD_BLACK and WD Blue NVMe SSDs under the Sandisk Optimus lineup.
CFO Luis Visoso explained, "We believe that the NAND market is going through structural evolution catalyzed by AI...should reduce cyclicality of our NAND business, creating higher average long-term margins and returns." He reported revenue of $3,025 million, exceeding guidance, and strong sequential growth across all markets.

Outlook

For Q3, management guided revenue between $4.4 billion and $4.8 billion, forecasting a market "more undersupplied than it was in the second quarter." Non-GAAP gross margin is expected between 65% and 67%. Non-GAAP operating expenses are projected between $450 million and $470 million, with non-GAAP EPS forecast between $12 and $14, assuming 157 million fully diluted shares. "We expect bids to be down mid-single digits due to a lower-than historical seasonality as we benefit from accelerating strength in data center," Visoso said.
The supply-demand environment is described as requiring "careful allocation planning and alignment with our customers," with ongoing focus on disciplined execution through the BiCS8 transition.

Financial Results

Revenue for the second quarter was $3,025 million, up 31% quarter-over-quarter and 61% year-over-year, surpassing the previous guidance range. Edge revenue reached $1,678 million, consumer $907 million, and data center $440 million, with data center up 64% sequentially.
Non-GAAP gross margin was 51.1%, compared to 29.9% in the prior quarter. Non-GAAP operating margin rose to 37.5% from 10.6%. Non-GAAP EPS was $6.20, up from $1.22. The quarter included $24 million in start-up costs and a non-GAAP operating expense of $413 million, which benefited from a nonrecurring item related to product introductions.
The company ended the quarter with $1,539 million in cash and $603 million in debt, having paid down $750 million during the quarter. Adjusted free cash flow was $843 million, representing a 27.9% margin. Sandisk also announced an extension of its JV with Kioxia to 2034, involving $1,165 million in payments over 2026–2029.

Q&A

Mark Newman, Bernstein: Asked about long-term agreements and supply-demand balance. Goeckeler responded, "There's a number of things happening in the dynamics of our business that are contributing to the results you're seeing...We're investing billions of dollars of CapEx...we're going to drive mid-teens to high-teens bit growth on a sustained basis." Visoso added, "We're making significant progress with several of our customers who really want us to prioritize or assure supply."
Joseph Moore, Morgan Stanley: Inquired about key value cache and data center NAND demand. Goeckeler replied, "Our initial looks at it...for '27 demand, we think that's roughly maybe 75 to 100 additional exabytes. And then a year after that, you can double that."
Christopher Muse, Cantor Fitzgerald: Asked about incremental AI-driven NAND demand and capital return. Goeckeler said, "We're now looking at high-60s exabyte growth in data center as our forecast." Visoso replied, "Our priority is to continue to invest in the business...and to build prudent cash reserve."
James Schneider, Goldman Sachs: Questioned factory utilization and future expansion. Goeckeler stated, "We haven't had any underutilization in the fab for a couple of quarters now...Kitakami is where we're expanding."
Mehdi Hosseini, Susquehanna: Asked about ASP mix and urgency for multiyear contracts. Visoso said, "We're driving a better mix...partnering with those customers that value our relationship." Goeckeler observed, "I do think that customers are starting to look further down the horizon especially on the data center."

Sentiment Analysis

Analysts expressed positive sentiment, repeatedly congratulating management and focusing on growth in AI, robust guidance, and the pace of industry change.
Management maintained a confident tone in prepared remarks, frequently citing strong demand, disciplined execution, and industry leadership. During Q&A, management was transparent and detailed, yet emphasized caution and discipline regarding capital allocation and customer agreements.
Compared to the previous quarter, both analysts and management displayed heightened optimism, with analysts increasingly focused on AI-driven demand and long-term agreements.

Quarter-over-Quarter Comparison

Guidance for Q3 revenue and margins was significantly higher than the previous quarter's outlook, reflecting improved market conditions and stronger-than-expected pricing.
The company shifted from discussing nascent long-term agreements to confirming that at least one agreement had been signed, with others in progress.
Data center revenue growth accelerated sharply, and management highlighted the transition of data center to the largest NAND market for 2026.
Management's confidence was more pronounced, citing structurally higher margins and returns, with analysts echoing increased optimism and focus on AI as a transformative market driver.

Risks and Concerns

Management acknowledged that demand continues to exceed supply, necessitating "careful allocation planning and alignment with our customers."
Visoso noted, "Any material increase in capital deployment would require high confidence that demand at attractive pricing levels is durable over a several year horizon with financial commitments."
The company is exposed to risks related to the timing and terms of long-term agreements, and the need for ongoing innovation and capital investment was cited as a continuous requirement.

Final Takeaway Sandisk reported substantial sequential growth in revenue and profitability, driven by AI-fueled demand across data center, edge, and consumer markets. Management outlined a structurally higher margin and return profile for the NAND business, supported by disciplined capacity planning, supply agreements, and continued innovation. The company set an ambitious Q3 guidance, underscoring confidence in sustained demand and highlighting its strategic position as NAND becomes central to AI infrastructure globally.

Read the full Earnings Call Transcript

seekingalpha.com

[Sam] 'All Boats Are Rising' in Data and Memory, Says Western Digital Finance Chief. ...

Sam — 1/30/2026 11:30:45 AM

'All Boats Are Rising' in Data and Memory, Says Western Digital Finance Chief. Just Look at the Stocks. -- Barrons.com

Dow Jones Newswires January 30, 2026 10:18:00 AM ET

Western Digital's stellar earnings report Thursday evening validated the hype that has been building in a once-sleepy corner of the technology sector.

The company posted adjusted earnings of $2.13 a share for its fiscal second quarter, surpassing analysts' consensus estimates of $1.93. Revenue totaled $3.02 billion, above Wall Street's call for $2.93 billion.

Western Digital's primary rival, Seagate Technology, had its own blockbuster earnings print earlier this week, which caused both companies' stocks to surge.

Western Digital, while down 4.8% on Friday, has risen 54% this year and 440% over the past 12 months.

Artificial intelligence has boosted the value of companies' data, fueling demand for high-capacity hard-disk drives, or HDDs, at data centers. At the same time, Western Digital and Seagate have kept unit supply tight, resulting in wider margins.

But data-storage is a notoriously cyclical industry. It tends to go through deep lulls once customers get their drives in place and supply catches up to demand. Western Digital posted losses in fiscal 2023 and 2024 during the last downturn. Investors are hoping things will be different in the AI era.

Barron's caught up with Kris Sennesael, Western Digital's chief financial officer, after the company's earnings call to understand how he is handling the burst in demand and whether AI will alter the data-storage industry for good.

AI-Driven Demand

"Everything you learned about hard-disk drives and storage and everything you learned about Western Digital over the last three, five, or 10 years, you can delete it and throw it away," Sennesael told Barron's.

The company is focused on providing high-capacity HDDs to the so-called AI hyperscalers. These customers are using and then creating more and more data, so their HDD purchases are no longer seasonal or cyclical, Sennesael argued.

"You get this flywheel of more data that's being used, more data that's being created, more data that's being stored," he said.

The company has changed its business model as a result of dealing with a limited number of massive companies. It is prioritizing collaboration and long-term purchase agreements. Western Digital's 2026 calendar year is booked, and it also has two agreements through 2027 and one through 2028.

"And with all our other customers, we have continuous discussions to potentially going to '28 or '29. Some are even asking about '30," Sennesael said. "They want to secure supply many years out."

Managing Supply

The hyperscalers have decent visibility on what they will need for data storage, Sennesael said, which in turn helps Western Digital plan supply.

The company doesn't commit all of its capacity in these long-term agreements, with customers instead agreeing to a " base volume." If they need more drives, Western Digital may be able to provide them, but it will do so at even more favorable terms.

As for adding volume to keep up with demand, the company wants to produce and move customers to higher-capacity, higher-margin drives as opposed to shipping more units.

"That's where all the innovation comes into play," Sennesael said. "We have tremendous smart engineers that know how to drive to higher capacity drives."

The plan should result in bigger profits. Western Digital's gross margin expanded to 46.1% last quarter, up from 38.4% just a year ago. It forecast a margin between 47% and 48% in the current quarter.

Fending off the Competition

The data-storage industry has consolidated in recent years, lessening the competitive pressures on Western Digital. But some observers have concerns that flash-memory chips from companies like Sandisk Corp. and Micron Technology could cannibalize HDD sales.

That would be an awkward scenario for Western Digital. It spun off Sandisk as an independent company last February. Since then, Sandisk stock has soared some 1,700%.

Sennesael said Western Digital doesn't have any regrets about the (amicable) divorce. He still agrees with the board's conclusion that two businesses with clear strategic focuses would create more value separately than together.

"All boats are rising," Sennesael said.

Flash memory does have advantages in some use cases. Most notably, it can transport data between AI processors more quickly. But it is also around 10 to 15 times more expensive on a per-terabyte basis, Sennesael estimated, making it less scalable as data loads grow.

"Just from an economics point of view, for our customers, that doesn't really work," he said.

It helps that Western Digital still has around 7.5 million Sandisk shares, now worth roughly $5 billion. The company has said it will monetize those shares within the next three weeks to help pay off debt, giving it further fuel to buy back shares and expand its dividend program.

[SiliconAlley] My $450 price target has been officially reached. WDC plus 1/3 share of SNDK

SiliconAlley — 1/28/2026 4:39:44 PM

[Sam] Seagate Stock Surges After Earnings. Why Western Digital and Sandisk Are Also Ra...

Sam — 1/28/2026 8:14:56 AM

Seagate Stock Surges After Earnings. Why Western Digital and Sandisk Are Also Rallying. -- Barrons.com
50 minutes agoPublished 50 minutes ago
Dow Jones Newswires

Seagate Technology stock was surging on Wednesday -- and the hard-disk drive maker's fiscal second-quarter earnings were lifting its peers, too.

Shares rallied 11% to $411 ahead of the opening bell, making Seagate the S&P 500's top performer in premarket trading. Futures tracking the index were 0.3% higher after a slew of solid earnings reports helped reignite the artificial- intelligence rally.

The move higher came after Seagate reported adjusted quarterly earnings of $3.11 a share, as revenue rose 22% from a year ago to $2.83 billion. Analysts were expecting earnings of $2.84 a share on sales of $2.74 billion, according to a FactSet poll.

Guidance for the current quarter was another reason the stock was popping. Seagate is expecting adjusted earnings of $ 3.40 a share and revenue of $2.90 billion, way above what analysts had forecast.

The earnings beat all boils down to the artificial-intelligence boom, which has driven up demand for data and hard drives.

"As AI applications amplify the creation and economic value of data, modern data centers increasingly need storage solutions that combine performance and cost-efficiency," Seagate CEO Dave Mosley said in the earnings release.

The stellar results looked set to boost the broader memory sector, which has started 2026 on a tear due to sky-high demand for data from so-called AI hyperscalers.

Shares in rival hard-disk drive maker Western Digital rallied 7.7% in premarket trading on Wednesday. Flash-memory supplier Sandisk, which spun off from Western Digital last year, gained 5.9%.

Memory-chip maker Micron Technology was 4.4% higher, getting an additional boost from a trio of semiconductor companies issuing rock-solid guidance.

[Sam] I've been there, done that.... I imagine many of us have. Especially in the last...

Sam — 1/13/2026 9:21:11 PM

I've been there, done that.... I imagine many of us have. Especially in the last few years as it sure feels like there have been a lot of stocks that have gone into the stratosphere lately after being stuck on earth for years!

Sandisk was for years my major holding. I made good money on it when it was sold to WDC. I almost bought it back when it was spun off, thought about it two or three times, both at around 49 and again around 70. Never bought a share.

Sheesh....

[Greg Hull] Normally, the hottest stock in the S&P500 would draw a crowd to a board. In 202...

Greg Hull — 1/13/2026 6:55:39 PM

Normally, the hottest stock in the S&P500 would draw a crowd to a board.

In 2024 I needed to liquidate some holdings to pay for some home improvements. I looked at my options and chose to raise the majority of the funds by selling WDC. For years I had high hopes, but they hadn't materialized. I made a similar decision in selling AAPL twenty years ago. How much richer I would be if I had sold XXX instead of YYY... Why can't I get a do-over?

[Sam] The Great Storage Pivot: How Western Digital Outpaced the Field in the AI Data S...

Sam — 1/12/2026 11:51:58 PM

The Great Storage Pivot: How Western Digital Outpaced the Field in the AI Data Supercycle
By: MarketMinute

January 12, 2026 at 17:28 PM EST

The global technology sector has shifted its focus from the raw processing power required for AI training to the massive infrastructure needed for data retention and inference. Western Digital ( NASDAQ: WDC) has emerged as the surprise champion of the storage market. By early 2026, the company has not only successfully navigated a complex corporate divorce but has also leveraged a "Storage Supercycle" to deliver financial results that have left its primary competitors trailing in its wake.

The outperformance of Western Digital is a direct result of the industry’s transition into the "AI Data Lake" era. While the previous two years were defined by a mad dash for GPUs, 2025 and 2026 have been defined by the desperate need to store the petabytes of data those GPUs generate. With a leaner, more focused corporate structure and a dominant position in high-capacity hard disk drives (HDDs), Western Digital has seen its stock price surge by over 280% through 2025, outstripping rivals like Seagate Technology ( NASDAQ: STX) and Micron Technology ( NASDAQ: MU).

A Tale of Two Companies: The 2025 Split and Financial ResurgenceThe cornerstone of Western Digital’s current dominance was the successful completion of its corporate split on February 24, 2025. By spinning off its volatile flash memory business into a new standalone entity, SanDisk, the remaining Western Digital ( NASDAQ: WDC) became a pure-play leader in high-capacity HDD technology. This strategic move allowed the company to shed the cyclical baggage of the consumer NAND market and focus entirely on the high-margin enterprise storage needs of hyperscale data centers.

The financial impact of this focus was immediate and profound. In its Q1 fiscal 2026 report, released in late 2025, Western Digital reported revenue of $2.82 billion, a 27% year-over-year increase that caught many analysts off guard. More importantly, the company’s non-GAAP gross margins expanded to a staggering 43.5%, nearly double the levels seen during the industry downturn of 2023. This margin expansion was fueled by a global shortage of nearline HDDs, which are essential for storing the massive datasets used in Generative AI.

Market reaction has been overwhelmingly bullish. In January 2026, Western Digital was officially readmitted to the Nasdaq-100 index, a move that signaled its return to the upper echelon of the technology world. Investors who bet on the "HDD is dead" narrative were forced to cover their positions as lead times for high-capacity 32TB drives ballooned to over a year. The company’s ability to maximize its existing energy-assisted PMR (ePMR) technology allowed it to capture immediate demand while its competitors were still ironing out the kinks in next-generation recording technologies.

Winners and Losers in the New Storage HierarchyWestern Digital stands as the primary beneficiary of the current market dynamics, but the "Storage Supercycle" has created a clear divide between winners and those struggling to keep pace. The spinoff entity, SanDisk, has also thrived as an "infrastructure aristocrat," with its stock soaring as it doubled the price of enterprise SSDs to meet the needs of AI inference tasks. Together, the two halves of the former Western Digital empire have effectively cornered both the high-speed (SSD) and high-capacity (HDD) segments of the market.

On the other side of the ledger, Seagate Technology ( NASDAQ: STX) has found itself in a fierce battle for second place. While Seagate was first to market with volume production of Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology, Western Digital’s more conservative approach—squeezing more life out of traditional recording methods—proved more reliable for hyperscalers during the 2025 capacity crunch. Meanwhile, memory giants like Micron Technology ( NASDAQ: MU), Samsung Electronics (KRX: 005930), and SK Hynix (KRX: 000660) have been forced to pivot heavily toward High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) for GPUs, occasionally leaving their standard NAND and storage divisions vulnerable to the aggressive pricing and supply-chain maneuvers of the Western Digital/SanDisk duo.

The "losers" in this scenario are arguably the hyperscale cloud providers like Amazon ( NASDAQ: AMZN) and Google ( NASDAQ: GOOGL). These companies, which enjoyed years of cheap, abundant storage, are now facing a "seller's market" where storage costs are a significant headwind to AI profitability. With HDD prices remaining roughly six times cheaper per terabyte than SSDs for bulk storage, these giants have no choice but to pay the premium demanded by Western Digital to keep their data lakes expanding.

The Significance of the "AI Data Cycle"The current outperformance of Western Digital is not merely a fluke of supply and demand; it represents a fundamental shift in how the world values data. We have entered the "AI Data Cycle," where the value of a company is increasingly tied to its ability to retain and analyze historical data. This has breathed new life into the HDD industry, which many had predicted would be fully replaced by flash memory by the mid-2020s.

Instead, the energy crisis facing global data centers has reinforced the HDD’s relevance. As data centers face strict energy quotas in 2026, the cost-to-power ratio of spinning disks for "cold" or "warm" storage remains superior to massive SSD arrays for certain use cases. This has created a regulatory environment where efficiency is as important as speed, playing directly into Western Digital’s engineering strengths.

Historically, this period draws comparisons to the early 2010s, when a massive flood in Thailand disrupted the global HDD supply chain and sent prices soaring. However, the current situation is driven by a permanent increase in demand rather than a temporary disruption in supply. The ripple effects are being felt across the semiconductor industry, as the shortage of storage is now becoming a primary bottleneck for AI deployment, rivaling the GPU shortages of 2023.

What Lies Ahead: The Road to 50TB and BeyondLooking toward the remainder of 2026 and into 2027, the primary challenge for Western Digital will be the successful transition to HAMR technology. While the company has thrived by extending the life of ePMR, the roadmap to 50TB drives and beyond will eventually require the more advanced heat-assisted methods that Seagate has already begun to deploy. The market will be watching closely for Western Digital’s HAMR qualification in late 2026, which will determine if it can maintain its margin lead.

In the short term, the market remains in a state of structural deficit. Analysts expect storage pricing to remain elevated through at least the third quarter of 2026. This provides Western Digital with a massive "war chest" of cash, which it could use for further R&D or potential strategic acquisitions in the software-defined storage space. The possibility of a "hard landing" for AI demand remains a tail risk, but as long as companies continue to prioritize data-driven decision-making, the floor for storage demand appears to be much higher than in previous cycles.

Final Assessment: A Transformed Market LeaderWestern Digital’s journey from a struggling, bifurcated giant to a streamlined, high-performance leader is a masterclass in corporate restructuring and market timing. By separating its Flash and HDD businesses, the company allowed the market to value each segment appropriately, revealing a powerhouse in the HDD space that was previously obscured by the volatility of the NAND market.

As we move through 2026, investors should keep a close eye on two key metrics: the pace of HAMR adoption and the contract pricing for 20TB+ nearline drives. If Western Digital can maintain its current execution streak, it will remain the cornerstone of the AI infrastructure trade. The storage market has moved from a commodity business to a strategic bottleneck, and for now, Western Digital holds the keys to the warehouse.

This content is intended for informational purposes only and is not financial advice.

markets.chroniclejournal.com

[Sam] Western Digital to Announce Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Financial Results on...

Sam — 1/12/2026 11:49:10 PM

Western Digital to Announce Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Financial Results on January 29, 2026

Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) plans to announce its second quarter fiscal year 2026 financial results after the market closes on Thursday, January 29, 2026. The company will host a conference call with the investment community to discuss these results on January 29, 2026, at 1:30 p.m. Pacific / 4:30 p.m. Eastern. A live audio webcast and a webcast replay of the conference call will be available at investor.wdc.com.

bakersfield.com

[Bargain Hunter] Does anyone remember Optane? One of the many "flash killer" technologies that u...

Bargain Hunter — 1/2/2026 2:35:30 PM

Does anyone remember Optane? One of the many "flash killer" technologies that used to pop up from time to time.

The forgotten Intel drive that was faster than any SSD :
howtogeek.com

[Sam] Normally, the hottest stock in the S&P500 would draw a crowd to a board. It has ...

Sam — 1/1/2026 1:54:54 PM

Normally, the hottest stock in the S&P500 would draw a crowd to a board. It has been a strange, weird year in many respects.

How Western Digital Became the S&P 500's Best Stock in 2025 -- and Why Trade Desk Was the Worst -- Barrons.com
Dow Jones Newswires December 31, 2025 04:40:00 PM ET

British mathematician Clive Humby said it best when he proclaimed that data were the new oil. Nearly two decades later, the statement rings true.

0Artificial intelligence was the foremost theme dominating 2025. The technology has driven massive demand for data storage products and memory chips, which has been a boon to certain stocks, including the top three performers in the S&P 500.

Western Digital dominated the benchmark index this year. By all accounts, the company had a blowout 2025, with shares exploding 282% on the back of ramping demand for its hard drives. Western Digital is best known as a major supplier of traditional hard disk drives, used for high-capacity data storage.

The steep gains become even more impressive considering Western Digital's market capitalization of $60.2 billion. It means the upswing in the stock price can be chalked up to more than volatility and speaks to the company's dominance in its industry.

Micron Technology is another name that crushed 2025, gaining 239%. The memory-chip maker posted better-than-expected earnings for its quarter ended in November and issued guidance that handily topped expectations to cap off a stellar year.

Seagate Technology Holdings surged 219% in 2025. Demand has exploded for Seagate's highest-capacity, highest-margin drives on the back of the data-center buildout. Seagate CEO Dave Mosley told Barron's earlier this month that the advent of AI had boosted the economic value of data and fundamentally reshaped hard drive demand.

Another name worth mentioning is Sandisk. The stock has only been in the S&P 500 for about a month, yet has gained 559% in 2025. Sandisk was spun off from Western Digital in February. While Sandisk soared during the year, it's not being considered the S&P 500's best stock since it only joined the index in November.

It wasn't a stellar year for every company. Shares of The Trade Desk, an advertising-technology company, cratered 68% in 2025. The stock experienced a 40% drop after earnings in August, when the company issued a cautionary outlook for the third quarter. And that wasn't all: Fears of ramping competitive pressure from Amazon.com have weighed on shares, coupled with broader macroeconomic concerns.

Fiserv is a laggard whose shares have slumped 67% this year. The fintech's troubles began in earnest in late October. Shares sank 44% after Fiserv halved its top-line growth forecast and slashed its earnings outlook, saying its operations in Argentina would be hurt by decaying economic conditions.

The inflation in Argentina that once benefited Fiserv has since cooled, and the company also has struggled with operational missteps. On Oct. 29, the stock closed below $100 for the first time since 2023. It has yet to rebound to those levels.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities was another straggler in 2025, with shares of the real estate investment trust falling 50%. The REIT was one of the index's worst performers in October after swinging to a loss in the third quarter and issuing an underwhelming full-year outlook.

On Dec. 3, Alexandria Real Estate Equities declared a dividend of 72 cents a share for the fourth quarter, or a 45% reduction from its third-quarter dividend, which the company framed as part of a broader attempt to strengthen its balance sheet.

[Bargain Hunter] Regarding my earlier post about WDC's remaining stake in SNDK and filing require...

Bargain Hunter — 12/4/2025 6:27:31 PM

Regarding my earlier post about WDC's remaining stake in SNDK and filing requirements:

There has been no filing from WDC. I believe that means that they sold little or none of their shares and are still a 5% owner.

On one hand that is a little ominous because (assuming that they have not changed the plan to sell it all by Feb 21) there will be a degree of selling pressure in the next 2+ months. On the other hand it suggests they have a high degree of confidence in a higher price during that period. They might not have a really good crystal ball regarding NAND prices, but they should have a really good understanding of the HDD market and what that might imply for SSDs and NAND.

[Bargain Hunter] I think that Micron's announcement about closing down Crucial is very significan...

Bargain Hunter — 12/4/2025 1:38:48 PM

I think that Micron's announcement about closing down Crucial is very significant short term for SanDisk. The lesser impact (in my view) is reduced competition in the consumer flash space. The greater impact is the indication that NAND supplies at Micron are tight enough, and expected to stay tight long enough, to permanently shut down Crucial. Micron is looking to where its production can bring the most profit. In DRAM, that means diverting more supply towards HBM rather than "regular" DRAM. In NAND it seems to mean applying more of their capital expenditure towards increasing DRAM supply rather than NAND supply and devoting more of their NAND towards SSDs than memory sticks, etc.

So the announcement tends to validate the projections for shortages of memory chips in general and NAND in particular.

[Sam] NAND Flash Wafer Supply Tightens Further, Some Products See Over 60% Contract P...

Sam — 12/1/2025 4:06:11 PM

NAND Flash Wafer Supply Tightens Further, Some Products See Over 60% Contract Price Hikes in November, Says TrendForce
Published Dec.01 2025,15:26 PM (GMT+8)

TrendForce’s latest research shows that demand for NAND Flash stayed strong in November 2025, fueled by AI applications and solid enterprise SSD orders. Meanwhile, suppliers continued to focus on capacity for high-margin enterprise and premium products, while old-node capacity was quickly phased out.

This led to a further tightening of wafer supply, causing November contract prices for mainstream wafers to rise sharply. Monthly average price increases varied from 20% to over 60% across all product categories, with the surge quickly expanding to all density segments.

A detailed analysis of November's pricing trends reveals that 1Tb TLC experienced the most significant shortage due to persistent enterprise SSD demand, causing a sharp increase in average prices. The 512 Gb TLC, affected by the faster phase-out of legacy nodes and sustained market demand, saw the largest price hike among all TLC products, rising over 65% MoM. Additionally, the 256 Gb TLC continued to see substantial price growth as supply shortages re-emerged after further legacy-node shutdowns.

The QLC supply chain became much tighter thanks to strong demand for high-capacity enterprise products and increasing shipments for cold-storage applications, with 1Tb QLC experiencing significant price hikes in November. MLC products also continued to see rising ASPs, supported by steady demand in industrial control and consumer markets.

TrendForce reports that suppliers currently have significant pricing power, and wafer-level supply shortages are unlikely to improve soon. Consequently, contract prices are projected to keep rising in December.

[Bargain Hunter] If they do a debt for equity exchange --What is the effect on the stock price? ...

Bargain Hunter — 11/26/2025 6:25:56 PM

If they do a debt for equity exchange --What is the effect on the stock price?

I guess it depends on what the recipient(s) of the shares choose to do with them.

This press release talks about the previous time:

investor.sandisk.com

I don't know whether they would do another secondary offering. The remaining number of shares is well below the number sold before, but the current total dollar value is well above.

My best guess is that the recipients will simply sell the shares on the open market, probably spread out over time. I get the impression that it has already started.

[franklin1] If they do a debt for equity exchange --What is the effect on the stock price? ...

franklin1 — 11/26/2025 4:55:02 PM

If they do a debt for equity exchange --What is the effect on the stock price?

"Yes. So during Q1 of fiscal '26, we did not monetize the remaining stake in SanDisk. And so we still have 7.5 million shares. It is our intention to monetize that stake prior to the expiration of the 1-year anniversary of the separation, which is February 21. Last time when we did the monetization, we did a debt for equity exchange. And we haven't made up our mind how we are going to do it, but it could potentially be a similar transaction like we did the first time."

[Bargain Hunter] Can you please provide where you learned that western Digital was planning on se...

Bargain Hunter — 11/26/2025 3:29:51 PM

Can you please provide where you learned that western Digital was planning on selling the rest of their SNDK shares

WDC 2026 Q1 earnings conference call.