SNDK Rips 15.86% to $1,506 as Bernstein Defends the $8B Q4 Guide Through the NAND Spot Scare

Bernstein Walks Back the Spot Scare

The catalyst is a follow-up Bernstein note out Friday morning that explicitly reassured the desk after Thursday's spot-memory wobble, telling clients SanDisk's guide for $8 billion in fiscal Q4 sales, rising gross margins, and $30-$33 EPS should be safe. Bernstein kept its Outperform rating with the $1,700 price target intact, which is the same number it stretched to from $1,250 after the Q3 print. Reading the tape: a sell-side shop that flagged the cooling spot market 24 hours earlier had to come back and tell holders the cycle thesis isn't broken. That is exactly the setup that prints an 8.5% intraday bounce on top of a stock already up 429% year-to-date, and the perp tracked it for a 15.86% 21-hour move.

The April Contract Tape Did the Heavy Lifting

What's actually under this is the contract pricing data Bernstein anchored on. DRAM contract prices were up 57% in April versus the Q1 average, and NAND was up 65-70% in the same window. Bernstein's read is that the soft-spot prints reflect some manufacturers stepping back from elevated prices, not demand destruction — the well-capitalized buyers are still competing for tight supply on the back of AI chip pull. The structural call lines up: AI inference server storage demand is modeled to go from 6 EB in 2024 to 447 EB by 2030, and SanDisk has been writing variable pricing into long-term supply agreements so it can ride the curve rather than lock in at last cycle's print. The company also booked $42 billion in multiyear contracts last quarter plus two more this month, which is the supply commitment Wall Street is now back-solving its targets against.

$1,506 Above the Mizuho Line

This print clears the $1,420 high where Mizuho's Vijay Rakesh raised SNDK to $1,625 from $1,220 yesterday, and it does it on a day where the news was a defensive note rather than fresh upside. Sell-side dispersion now stretches from a long-tail $843 to Susquehanna at $2,000, with Goldman at $1,200 from $700 on May 1 and Bernstein at $1,700 — a $1,500-handle stock with a $1,157 spread between the most bullish and bearish published targets. For perp positioning, the takeaway is that the marginal flow on dips is still buying: Thursday's 5% downdraft on a single negative print got fully retraced and then some inside one session, which says the book on this name still leans long even after a 3,314% post-spinoff rally. Carry-trade risk on a name with this dispersion is asymmetric, and the perp's $108M 24h volume is still a fraction of the spot tape — gap risk into the cash open remains the variable to size around.