If you bought $1,000 worth of Sandisk Corp. (SNDK) stock at Wednesday’s close, it was worth about $819 by Friday’s close. Two trading days were all it took.
Shares fell roughly 18% across Thursday, October 29, and Friday, October 30, 2026, ending at $1,150.89, according to StockAnalysis data. With about 142 million shares outstanding, that erased roughly $36 billion in market value.
The selling followed a record quarter. Sandisk’s fiscal first-quarter revenue hit $11 billion, up 378% from a year earlier, according to its earnings release.
Also read: Sandisk CFO admits higher prices are hurting consumer sales
Sandisk’s weak spot is the cheap end of the market
Edge, Sandisk’s biggest unit, sells flash memory to phone and PC makers, and it grew just 7% from the prior quarter. Chief Financial Officer Luis Visoso explained why on the earnings call. He described resilience in premium and mainstream devices, “partially offset by contraction at the lower end.”
That is the admission that matters, and it reaches past the consumer sales slump. Sandisk’s quarterly filing shows Edge customers bought 20% less flash by volume than a year earlier. They still paid far more in total, because the price per gigabyte soared.
The squeeze is industry-wide. HP Inc. (HPQ) planned PC price hikes over memory costs, Reuters reported, and IDC says smartphone shipments fell a record 22% last quarter.
Big buyers aren’t flinching. “To the contrary, we’re seeing very strong demand from our customers,” Visoso told Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan. To me, that split explains Friday’s selling better than any headline number.
Morgan Stanley is betting cloud demand covers it
Morgan Stanley isn’t worried, according to a research note shared with TheStreet. Analyst Joseph Moore kept an Overweight rating and a $1,750 price target in the October 30 report, titled “Earnings power grinding higher.” Like every price in this story, that target is pre-split; Sandisk’s 8-for-1 stock split takes effect November 20.
Moore’s case rests on supply, not shoppers. The note says consumer and client products fell to 56% of revenue from 90% a year earlier, a share it expects to keep shrinking.
In his view, data center growth “should ease concerns about a slowdown in consumer devices upsetting supply and demand.” Put simply, cloud buyers will absorb whatever chips shoppers stop buying.
I agree with the math, but the note also reveals a cost. Sandisk’s average selling prices rose only about 9% last quarter, trailing other memory makers, because it locked in contracts early, Moore wrote.
The bigger surprise sits in his model. Moore raised his 2027 earnings estimate to about $271 a share, from $212, yet left his target unchanged.
That’s because Morgan Stanley values Sandisk on through-cycle earnings of $62.50 a share, less than a quarter of that estimate. Its model even shows fiscal 2029 earnings falling about 21%, so this bull expects leaner years too.
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The stock looks cheap until you check the math
Sandisk trades at 4.75 times forward earnings, per StockAnalysis. Against Morgan Stanley’s through-cycle figure, Friday’s price is about 18 times earnings, a more ordinary multiple.
The stock sits about 51% below its 52-week high of $2,354.39 but roughly six times its 52-week low of $183. It also closed Friday just 5% above Morgan Stanley’s $1,100 bear case.
Options traders gave that level close to even odds of breaking within a year, the note shows.
Morgan Stanley sits below the Street. Sandisk carries a Buy consensus from 25 analysts with an average target near $2,105, per StockAnalysis:
- $3,000 is among the highest targets, set by Bernstein’s Mark Newman with a Buy rating before the report.
- $1,750 is Morgan Stanley’s target, rated Overweight.
- $1,000 is the lowest target on the Street, and three analysts rate the stock Hold while one says Sell.
After the split, Morgan Stanley’s target works out to about $219. The bank also discloses a stake of 1% or more in Sandisk and investment banking ties to the company.
What Sandisk holders should do now
The split changes nothing about what you own; it cuts the same pie into more slices. Moore expects about $30 billion in buybacks next year, which he says “should continue to help keep a floor under the stock as long as end-market demand remains strong.” That floor rests on demand investors now question.
If I held the stock, I’d watch two things before adding. One is whether the December quarter lands inside the 84.5% to 85.5% gross margin guide. The other is whether low-end weakness spreads to premium phones, where Moore’s thesis would crack first.
The $1,100 bear case also works as a line in the sand. A sustained break below it would tell holders the market doubts even the bank’s cautious through-cycle math.
Memory makers have chased an escape from boom and bust for decades, and Sandisk’s long-term contracts are its answer.
Morgan Stanley still values the company on through-cycle earnings, a quiet sign that even its bulls expect the cycle to return. The next signal may come soon, since only about $10.5 billion remains on Sandisk’s buyback authorization and Moore expects another large one.
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