Management's thesis
SanDisk, as reported by IT之家, indicated during its fiscal 2027 first-quarter conference call (the period July 4–October 2, 2026) that AI inference is changing the balance between supply and demand in the NAND memory market. Management argues that customers tend to underestimate the flash capacity needed to run AI infrastructure, and that for this reason they are significantly increasing long-term orders.
These are company statements, not independent market data: the material contains no third-party estimates of actual demand or absolute figures on the required capacity.
Long-term contracts and HBF technology
The company explained that its business model, called NBM, based on committed purchase volumes, contractual commitments and pricing mechanisms, has an order pipeline extending through 2030 and beyond. SanDisk specified that about 50% of the bits shipped in fiscal 2027 would already be locked in by NBM agreements, a share expected to rise to about two-thirds in 2028; toward the end of the decade, demand covered by NBM could exceed available supply.
On the technology front, the company announced that the first High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) memory die has completed tape-out and entered production. HBF is designed for AI inference: the stated goal is to approach HBM read bandwidth while retaining the typical capacity of NAND, to support larger models, longer contexts and a growing KV cache. First samples are expected in the next calendar year.
SanDisk also reported that the market is exploring the use of SLC NAND to replace a portion of costly DRAM: during inference, flash could serve as a capacity tier, preserving a larger context and reducing costly recomputations.
Better-than-expected results and stock reaction
Quarterly results beat expectations: revenue of $11.03 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $49.51, with guidance for the next quarter also above forecasts. The company announced a 1-for-8 stock split, effective November 19.
The stock market reaction was negative, however. On October 29, SNDK closed at $1,330.05, down 5.32% from $1,404.77 in the previous session. After the report was published after the market close, the price first rose and then fell back: in the evening, the after-hours value ranged from about $1,282.50 to $1,295.05, with a further decline of 2.6–3.6% and a cumulative drop of about 7.8% from the previous close.
The material does not explain the reasons behind this movement and contains no analyst commentary. It therefore remains to be verified, using additional sources, whether the correction reflects only profit-taking or also doubts about the sustainability of demand and long-term contracts.
