SanDisk Bleeds to $1,511 as the NAND Glut Trade Unwinds a 635% Run

Selling the News on a Record Quarter

This isn't a company-specific blowup. It's the same trade that has been unwinding all week, and today it dragged SanDisk into another session lower. The trigger sits offshore: Samsung's Q2 print, where operating profit landed near 89.4 trillion won — roughly a 19-fold jump year-on-year and a company record, powered by AI-driven DRAM, NAND and HBM pricing. Average DRAM selling prices rose 44% quarter over quarter and NAND jumped 53%.

A record on paper, and the tape sold it anyway. Revenue of about 171 trillion won missed, and more importantly the market read peak pricing plus telegraphed capacity as a top signal rather than a green light. Samsung shares opened more than 6% lower despite the earnings beat, and the memory complex followed overnight — Micron, SanDisk, Western Digital and Seagate all dipped as Samsung's post-earnings selloff bled across the sector. SanDisk has been leading the group down the entire way, sinking 11% in one session while Seagate fell 7% and Micron slid 4% on supply-glut fears.

Why SanDisk Wears the Glut Risk

The reason SanDisk keeps printing the sector's worst candles is structural. It is the purest NAND name in the group, with the bulk of its output exposed to spot pricing and a relatively small slice of forward revenue locked into contracts. When the fear is that pricing rolls over, the stock most levered to spot gets sold first and hardest.

And the glut fear is specific, not vibes: announced supply additions from both Samsung and SK Hynix are expected to soften memory pricing as capacity catches up with demand, while AI capital expenditure is broadly seen peaking in 2026 before tapering. That's the bear case in one line — pricing at the top, supply coming, capex rolling.

The counterweight is that the sell-side hasn't blinked. Even into the drawdown, Goldman Sachs lifted its SanDisk target to $2,200 from $1,200 while reiterating a Buy, and Micron itself is guiding to tight market conditions persisting beyond calendar 2027. Read together, this looks far more like a positioning unwind in a crowded winner than a break in the fundamental storage story.

The Math on a 635% Run

The size of the drop makes more sense once you look at what it's unwinding. SanDisk went from roughly 0.6 times forward earnings a year ago to more than 35 times at the peak, and now trades near 9.3 times forward earnings — the multiple has already been cut, but the stock is still up about 635% in 2026 after topping out near a 884% gain. When a name runs that far, the first real excuse to take profits tends to overshoot.

The excuse arrived on schedule. The rot started when the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped more than 6% in a single session and money rotated out of AI and chip names, sentiment that only worsened as Fed commentary flagged stretched asset valuations. Samsung's print then gave the memory sub-sector its own reason to keep selling.

For the perp desk, the read is straightforward: this is a de-grossing of a consensus long, not evidence that AI storage demand cracked. The tell will be whether spot NAND prints actually soften into the second half — if pricing holds, this drawdown is a positioning flush; if the glut shows up in the numbers, $1,511 stops being a discount and starts being fair value on a lower earnings path.