Sandisk Corp. (SNDK) is losing its everyday shoppers, and fast. Its consumer arm sells the memory cards and flash drives that made the brand famous. That business lost more than a quarter of its sales in three months.
Consumer revenue fell 29% from the prior quarter to $397 million, according to Sandisk’s fiscal first-quarter results. On the earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Luis Visoso said the drop came “as the market adjusts to higher pricing.”
That is a polite way of saying Sandisk charged more and shoppers bought less. The admission came inside a record quarter, which makes it easy to miss.
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Shoppers are paying more and buying less
Consumer sales also fell 39% from a year earlier, according to the same results. A year ago, that business brought in about 28% of Sandisk’s revenue. Today it accounts for less than 4%.
Booming data-center sales explain part of that shrinking share. Yet consumer dollars fell too, and with prices rising, unit sales almost certainly fell faster than revenue.
Chief Executive David Goeckeler still called the consumer arm “a differentiated strategic asset” in his prepared remarks.
That is the tension in plain view. Sandisk calls its shoppers strategic while its own price tags push them away.
Data centers are getting the flash first
Every memory card, phone, and server drive draws from the same supply of NAND flash chips. Sandisk is steering more of that supply toward data centers built for artificial intelligence, where customers sign multi-year contracts.
Data center revenue jumped 61% from the prior quarter to $4.8 billion, according to the release. Goeckeler said Sandisk “allocated more supply to address the growing demand from this end market.”
Those contracts now cover about half of Sandisk’s fiscal 2027 output, Visoso said. That leaves a thinner slice for the store shelf. The low end of its edge business, which supplies phone and PC makers, also shrank.
Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes opened the Q&A by tying Intel Corp.’s (INTC) weaker PC outlook to memory costs.
Goeckeler conceded that PC unit sales fell this year and will be “slightly down next year.” That means fewer devices sold, each carrying more storage at a higher price.
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Wall Street trims targets as Sandisk stock slides
Sandisk shares were down 12% by midday Oct. 30 despite an earnings beat, CNBC reported.
The sell-off hit the Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM), where Sandisk makes up about 4% of holdings, according to StockAnalysis. The fund fell more than 8% by the afternoon, a sign that a memory basket offers little shelter.
The bigger blow came from Japan. Kioxia Holdings Corp., Sandisk’s flash manufacturing partner, warned that price gains are stalling, Bloomberg reported. Its NAND selling prices rose about 20% last quarter, after a 70% jump the previous quarter.
Sandisk’s own numbers tell a similar story. Pricing drove two-thirds of its growth in the quarter that ended in July, according to its fiscal fourth-quarter release. This time, pricing drove about 40%, Visoso said, and he guided to only “modest” increases ahead.
Put that next to the consumer slump, and the picture sharpens. Price gains are cooling at the top of the market just as they break demand at the bottom.
On paper, the stock looks cheap. Analysts expect about $215 a share in adjusted fiscal 2027 profit, according to StockAnalysis. At the Oct. 30 price, that is less than six times earnings, a discount usually reserved for profits expected to fade.
Wall Street still mostly likes the name, though the Oct. 30 trims undo part of earlier target hikes. StockAnalysis shows a consensus Buy rating from 25 analysts, with an average price target of $2,144.
Here are the latest calls, in pre-split dollars:
- Hold, $1,300 target, down from $1,550: Wells Fargo’s Joseph Quatrochi, Oct. 30
- Buy, $2,000 target, down from $2,500: Bank of America’s Wamsi Mohan, Oct. 30
- Buy, $2,300 target, maintained: Barclays’ Thomas O’Malley, Oct. 30
Sandisk’s outlook hinges on the March quarter
Sandisk guided fiscal second-quarter revenue to $12.2 billion to $12.6 billion, according to the release. Split-adjusted trading for its eight-for-one stock split is set to begin Friday, Nov. 20, 2026, according to an SEC filing.
The real test comes after that. Visoso told Goldman Sachs analyst Jim Schneider that “our Q3 is normally our weakest sequential quarter.” That quarter covers roughly January through March.
I see two companies inside one quarter. The data center business looks durable, with multiyear contracts and customers coming back for more. The consumer business shows where pricing hits a wall, and that wall gets closer as price growth cools.
If you already own the stock, I would not sell into a slide driven by fear of a peak. I would trim only if Sandisk has grown into an outsized slice of your portfolio.
Profits kept climbing, yet the stock has roughly halved from its 52-week high of $2,354.39.
If you are on the sidelines, I would wait for the March quarter report. That seasonal low will show how much pricing power Sandisk has left.
For most of its history, Sandisk sold flash to shoppers first and servers second. This quarter shows that the order has flipped, and the shopper now waits at the back of the line.
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