SNDK Fades 8.4% on a Q3 Blowout as Profit-Takers Hit a 3,300% Run

The Print That Cleared Every Bar

Sandisk reported fiscal Q3 2026 after the close on April 30, and there is no honest way to call the numbers anything but a blowout. Revenue printed at $5.95 billion against a $4.68B Street consensus, up 251% year over year from roughly $1.7B in Q3 FY25. Non-GAAP EPS of $23.41 cleared the $14.36 consensus by about 63%. GAAP gross margin came in at 78.4%, up from 22.5% a year earlier — a level that does not exist anywhere in the prior NAND cycle's history book.

The guide was the bigger move. Sandisk pointed Q4 revenue to $7.75-$8.25B against a Street near $6.35B, and Q4 non-GAAP EPS to $30-$33 against a consensus near $22. The board approved a fresh $6B share repurchase authorization on the same release. CEO David Goeckeler framed the quarter as "a fundamental inflection point... where our technology leadership is enabling a deliberate shift in our mix toward the highest-value end markets, led by Datacenter." Datacenter revenue alone was up 645% year over year on the GAAP cut.

Why It Sold Off Anyway

The HIP-3 perp on xyz:SNDK traced shares 8.36% lower over the post-close session to $1,020. This is not a fundamentals trade. It is what happens to a stock that came into the print up roughly 360% YTD and over 3,300% in 12 months, built from a ~$5B spinoff valuation in February 2025 to a market cap north of $150B. Options had braced for a 21% implied move around earnings; long-only books that rode that tape had every reason to ring the register on the print.

The second thread is the cycle question. Yahoo Finance's earnings desk framed the report as "phenomenal" but with a pricing cycle that is "finite" — the bear case is not that demand fades, it is that 78% GAAP gross margins on NAND have a half-life. For a name priced as if the cycle keeps widening, even an in-line cycle commentary is effectively a downgrade. Management's insistence that storage demand for AI data shows "no sign of slowing" did not stop the bid from peeling.

Where the Bid Sits Now

At $1,020, SNDK has slipped under Morgan Stanley's $1,100 price target and now sits well below Evercore at $1,200, Bernstein at $1,250, and Melius at $1,350 — all set into the report. The math on the guide argues every one of those desks raises numbers off a $30-$33 Q4 EPS print. The counter-trade is whether the tape now reprices a faster mean-reversion in NAND ASPs once Micron and the Korean memory names report into the same window.

For the Hyperliquid perp specifically, the read is straightforward: an 8.4% fade against an options market that priced 21% means the cash session opens with the down-move only partly digested. The HIP-3 book on xyz:SNDK will set price ahead of any sell-side revision.