New York, April 28, 2026, 10:11 EDT
Micron Technology shares dropped roughly 3.0% to $508.80 early Tuesday, while Sandisk slid 3.2% to $1,035.50, retreating after Monday’s strong memory- chip surge. This came despite analysts rolling out some of Wall Street’s most aggressive AI demand forecasts to date. Nvidia lost 2.6% as well, signaling ongoing strain across the AI chip sector.
The shift is significant: Investors have moved past the question of whether memory makers can post a solid pricing quarter. Now, the focus is sharper — DRAM, NAND, and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) are being talked about as fundamental building blocks for AI, not just side bets.
This could be a departure from the usual cycle for memory: high prices tend to trigger a flood of supply, which then drags the market down. Ben Reitzes at Melius Research sees another possibility: an “inverse SaaS” setup. Here, customers lock in longer-term deals for limited AI hardware, flipping the script compared to software companies that lean on steady user subscriptions. MarketWatch
Melius kicked off coverage of Sandisk and Micron with Buy calls, tagging two-year price targets at $1,350 for Sandisk and $700 for Micron. According to Reitzes, the “AI memory cycle could keep going through the end of the decade,” with investors likely to assign higher multiples to more reliable margins and demand than previous cycles saw. Investing
Micron surged 5.6% to $524.56, and Sandisk jumped 8.1% to $1,070.20 on Monday, Barron’s said, after Reitzes declared, “It is time to acknowledge memory is core to our AI coverage.” Barron’s
D.A. Davidson took a bullish stance on Tuesday, with analyst Gil Luria starting Micron at Buy and slapping on a $1,000 target, according to Benzinga. The firm’s note pointed to AI as the force behind a “longer-than-usual memory cycle,” where new compute rollouts and added demand keep fueling each other, The Fly noted. Benzinga
Micron’s results landed with a splash for the bulls. Revenue for the fiscal second quarter hit $23.86 billion, way up from $8.05 billion one year before. Adjusted gross margin? 74.9%. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra called memory a “strategic asset” for customers navigating the AI age. Micron Technology
Micron announced in its prepared remarks that it’s signed its first five-year strategic customer agreement, or SCA—a multi-year supply contract designed to give both sides more predictability and stability. These kinds of deals are crucial to the bull thesis, signaling that big buyers are shifting away from spot buying and toward locking in supply ahead of time.
Sandisk faces a more immediate test, with its fiscal third-quarter numbers coming Thursday. Back in January, the company reported fiscal second-quarter revenue of $3.03 billion, up 61% from the prior year. Data-center sales jumped 64% from the previous quarter, thanks to robust demand from AI infrastructure projects. For the third quarter, Sandisk projected revenue between $4.40 billion and $4.80 billion, along with adjusted EPS in the $12 to $14 range.
Competition in this space is fierce—and far from hypothetical. SK Hynix, which supplies Nvidia and holds the number two spot in memory after Samsung Electronics, reported last week that demand for HBM from clients through the next three years is already “far exceeds” what it can make. First-quarter revenue? Up 198%. Reuters
Still, the risk is obvious. Memory’s notorious for wild cycles—if supply races ahead, or AI spending hits a lull, or workloads just start needing less memory thanks to efficiency gains, the boom can flip fast. Long-term deals might cushion the blows, but they can’t erase the cycle. Micron flagged these same uncertainties for investors, noting in its filings that outcomes could diverge from forecasts.
The tape was working against chip names Tuesday. The iShares Semiconductor ETF dropped 3.6%, while the Nasdaq 100-tracking QQQ slid roughly 1.1%. That hints at a broad chip selloff, not necessarily investors dismissing the Melius or D.A. Davidson calls.
In the next several days, eyes turn to Sandisk’s numbers—first up on the memory calendar. The question: does this run in memory stocks really break from the old cycle playbook? After Sandisk, the focus shifts to whether multi-year deals, HBM appetite, and solid NAND prices can actually support targets that used to seem pretty far-fetched.
