Bernstein has raised its price objective for SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) to $1,250 from $1,000 and detailed a high-end scenario that would place the stock at $3,000 - a level the firm says implies about 280% upside from the stock’s prevailing price near $781.
The research house reaffirmed an Outperform rating on the shares and identified SanDisk as its top short-term pick. The stock has climbed dramatically over the past year, rallying roughly 2,000% on the back of rising NAND flash prices and robust demand from AI data centers.
Bernstein analyst Mark Newman argues the market is still not fully valuing SanDisk’s prospective earnings. The stock gave back about 19% after Google introduced TurboQuant, a memory-compression algorithm that raised concerns about weaker NAND demand. Newman countered that those concerns were excessive, saying that "Turboquant fears were overdone," and noting that the technology primarily addresses high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in AI inference and has limited implications for NAND’s wider role in data storage and AI infrastructure.
The bullish thesis centers on continued upside in NAND prices. Newman projects adjusted earnings of $14.18 per share for SanDisk in its fiscal third quarter ending in March, above the consensus estimate of $13.99 and outside the company’s guidance midpoint within its $12–$14 range.
More meaningfully, Newman forecasts fiscal fourth-quarter earnings of $25.30 per share, well ahead of the Street estimate of $18.78. He attributes that projection to an expected 40% sequential increase in average selling prices (ASPs).
In a more aggressive scenario, Bernstein models NAND ASPs rising 75% in each of the next two quarters rather than the 55% and 40% assumed in its base case. Under that outcome, Newman estimates earnings of $40.53 in the June quarter alone, which would translate to full-year fiscal 2027 EPS of $224.
That extreme bull-case informs the $3,000 valuation, which Bernstein derives by applying a 13x multiple consistent with SanDisk’s historical peak-cycle trading range. The firm says this illustrates "significant asymmetric upside potential."
Bernstein’s base-case target of $1,250 applies an 11x multiple to average earnings across fiscal years 2026 through 2029, which the analyst estimates at $114 per share.
Newman notes that the stock is trading at roughly 9x consensus forward earnings, below the 10–13x range it attracted during earlier upcycles. He also highlights that the stock is at about 0.5x the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index on a forward price-to-earnings basis, versus a historical 0.8–1.0x range. "This suggests that the market does not believe the higher side of our estimates are reasonable and/or that there will be an imminent collapse in NAND prices with future upcycles to never return to such levels (the one time super-cycle theory)," he wrote.
Despite that skepticism, Newman contends the market is "significantly undervaluing earnings power and sustainability of this cycle," pointing out that NAND prices only began inflecting meaningfully six to seven months ago and that the industry remains structurally undersupplied.
SanDisk is scheduled to report fiscal third-quarter results on April 30.
Contextual note: The company’s recent share gains reflect a combination of commodity price moves and AI-related storage demand, and Bernstein’s scenarios are centered on different trajectories for NAND average selling prices and their impact on SanDisk’s earnings per share.