New York, April 14, 2026, 12:09 EDT
Sandisk shares eased about 2.2% to $932.01 by midday Tuesday, cooling off after Monday’s record-setting 11.8% surge to $952.50. Wall Street digested a new bullish call, but the stock had already been on a tear this year.
Sandisk is set to take Atlassian’s spot in the Nasdaq-100 when trading begins April 20, a switch that could trigger fresh demand from index-tracking funds. Nasdaq says the benchmark backs more than 200 products, collectively holding upwards of $600 billion.
Evercore ISI kicked off coverage on Monday, giving Sandisk an Outperform and tagging a $1,200 price target on the stock. That’s a call for the shares to outpace the broader market. Their bull case? $2,600. Evercore labeled Sandisk “a structural AI beneficiary” as appetite ramps for NAND flash—the storage backbone in solid-state drives and memory cards. Investing
Citi’s Asiya Merchant bumped her price target to $980 from $875, sticking with a Buy, pointing to “continued solid supply/demand for storage” and better pricing. The upgrade fueled a rally that’s already sent Sandisk shares soaring about 300% this year—putting it among the year’s top gainers. TipRanks
The company has warned investors about the especially tight environment. Back in January, Chief Executive David Goeckeler told Reuters that AI firms rolling out data centers for inference—when a model responds to user queries—were pushing hard for more capacity, prioritizing supply over price. Sandisk, for its part, locked in a supply extension with Kioxia, now running through 2034.
Still, it’s a tight race. Reuters said Tuesday that China’s YMTC matched Sandisk’s 11.8% slice of the global NAND market last year. Samsung led with 30.4%, Micron came in at 13.3%. Looking ahead, YMTC’s got three more plants in the pipeline, which—once they’re fully online—should more than double its capacity.
That’s where the risk comes in. Evercore, for its part, flagged the possibility of a sharp increase in supply from Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron or Chinese rivals, or a steeper-than-expected drop in selling prices. A pullback in AI infrastructure demand would also undercut the bull case. Meanwhile, a Seeking Alpha downgrade echoed those worries, saying both valuation and share price momentum look stretched with shares hovering near $1,000.
April 30 brings Sandisk’s fiscal third-quarter report—a key hurdle after the recent stock surge. Investors are watching to see if demand for AI-related storage outpaces incoming supply, and whether that’s enough to support the premium price the shares now command.
