By Hannah Pedone
Sandisk's stock jumps nearly 11% to seal its best quarterly performance on record, up 258% over the period
Shares of Sandisk soared on Tuesday after Bernstein analyst Mark Newman raised his price target to $3,000 from $1,700.
As investors get more discerning in separating potential artificial-intelligence winners from losers, memory stocks have become a standout trade.
In the face of skyrocketing prices and seemingly insatiable demand, memory companies are overhauling how they structure contracts with customers by locking in elevated current-day prices for a longer period of time. That dynamic is shaping up to be a boon for memory giants, with analysts recently turning more bullish on shares of Sandisk (SNDK) as a result.
Bernstein analyst Mark Newman just raised his price target on the stock to $3,000 from $1,700, saying that the company should benefit from the new paradigm in the way long-term agreements for memory are constructed.
Newman's new target represents nearly 50% upside from Monday's closing price and ties for the second highest on FactSet, behind Susquehanna analyst Mehdi Hosseini's $3,250 price target, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Sandisk's stock jumped 10.9% on Tuesday morning to seal its best quarterly performance on record, up 258% over the period. Granted, Sandisk has only been a standalone public company in its current iteration since February 2025, but this quarterly performance is notable because it follows triple-digit gains in each of the prior three quarters.
That's even as investors may be underestimating the potential of recently inked customer agreements, because of the way these deals were structured in the past. The way long-term agreements for memory were previously written was "extremely lopsided," favoring the customer, and new memory LTAs have a number of differences, Newman explained in his latest note.
New contracts come with up-front financial commitments, which provide downside protection for the company, allowing Sandisk to lock in customers at rates that could make earnings more predictable over a longer duration.
He said that unlike before, these new contracts set prices in a way that should be "disincentivizing customers to walk away in a down market."
The shift in how contracts are priced is a game changer for the industry, which has historically seen volatile price movements lead the way to cyclical downturns.
As memory prices rise and Sandisk looks to reduce the volatility of its financial results, Newman believes the company has higher earnings potential.
And he's not the only one.
On Friday, Jefferies analyst Blayne Curtis also raised his Sandisk price target to $3,000, citing rising memory prices and the company's potential to continue winning market share for eSSDs, or enterprise solid-state drives that are used for data centers and AI workloads.
He noted that Apple's and Microsoft's recently announced price hikes on consumer electronics, including Xbox devices, iPads and MacBook Pros, is a trend that stands to benefit SanDisk.
-Hannah Pedone
This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.