SanDisk Stock Surges 480% YTD as AI-Driven NAND Shortage Supercharges Memory Sector

SanDisk (SNDK) stock extended its extraordinary rally on Tuesday, closing up 9.64% after Jim Cramer's bullish comments on X and fresh analyst price target hikes. The stock has now gained 480% year-to-date and over 3,600% in the last 12 months. Cramer called SanDisk and Oracle “the tells of this market” and insisted that memory stocks “have to go to a higher place,” citing a severe NAND flash shortage spanning consumer, enterprise, and hyperscale markets.

The rally was not limited to SanDisk. Western Digital (WDC) rose 5.34% (up 170% YTD), Seagate (STX) climbed 4.87% (up 181% YTD), and Micron (MU) surged 12.09% to a new all-time high, even without a direct Cramer mention. Wall Street had already been piling on. On April 27, Cantor Fitzgerald lifted its SNDK price target to $1,400 from $1,000, and Morgan Stanley raised theirs to $1,100 from $690, both with Overweight ratings, pointing to tight NAND capacity as a key driver.

Underpinning the frenzy is a perfect storm of AI infrastructure demand and a prolonged NAND supply squeeze. SanDisk’s fiscal Q3 2026 revenue hit $5.95 billion, up 251% year-over-year, with gross margins exploding from 22.5% to 78.4%. Datacenter revenue rocketed 645% YoY to $1.47 billion, while Q4 guidance projects $7.75–$8.25 billion in revenue. NAND flash prices rose 60% in Q1 2026 and are projected to jump another 70–75% in Q2, with supply expected to remain tight through 2028.

SanDisk’s spinoff from Western Digital in February 2025 freed it to operate as a pure-play NAND company just as the AI buildout—what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang calls “the largest infrastructure buildout in human history”—drove insatiable storage demand. Hyperscalers like Google ($185 billion in 2026 AI capex), Meta, and Microsoft are ramping spending, and SanDisk has locked in five multiyear supply agreements worth over $11 billion. The stock’s inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 has added passive fund buying, further fueling momentum. However, the P/E ratio has climbed to 41x, well above historical medians, raising questions about overheating in a notoriously cyclical memory market.