SanDisk (SNDK) Stock Falls 12% as Bernstein Doubles Down With $3,000 Target

TLDR

• Bernstein analyst Mark Newman hiked his SanDisk price target to $3,000 from $1,700, the most bullish target on Wall Street.
• The upgrade comes despite SNDK falling about 12% over two sessions on AI infrastructure spending worries tied to OpenAI financing reports.
• Newman says new long-term supply agreements give SanDisk stronger downside protection than older industry contracts ever did.
• Bernstein raised fiscal 2027 and 2028 earnings per share estimates to $243 and $272 in its base case.
• SNDK still carries a Strong Buy consensus, though the average analyst price target sits below the current share price.

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SanDisk stock (SNDK) has had a wild ride lately. Shares dropped roughly 12% over two trading sessions this week after reports surfaced that OpenAI is looking at extra financing options for future AI infrastructure projects. That news rattled investors across the semiconductor space, and SanDisk got caught in the pullback.

Sandisk Corporation, SNDK

But Bernstein analyst Mark Newman isn’t backing down. He just raised his price target on SanDisk from $1,700 to $3,000, one of the boldest calls on the Street right now. He kept his Outperform rating intact.

Newman ranks among the top 1% of Wall Street analysts according to TipRanks data. His view: investors are still underestimating how much the memory industry has changed.

Why Newman Sees More Upside

The core of Newman’s argument centers on long-term supply agreements. Older contracts tended to favor customers when prices dropped. Today’s deals look different.

These newer agreements include fixed or range-bound pricing, upfront financial commitments, and contract terms stretching three to five years. Newman believes this setup cuts downside risk, even if it doesn’t fully erase the memory business’s cyclical nature.

He also pushed back on a common misread of these contracts. Many on Wall Street treat the upfront financial commitments as static guarantees. Newman argues their protective value actually grows as contracts mature, since the remaining delivery obligation shrinks while the upfront commitment stays fixed.

“We believe this is not understood by the Street,” he wrote, noting the structure strengthens protection later in the contract, “when it is more likely to be needed.”

Based on SanDisk’s recent agreements, Newman pegs the floor price at around $0.29 per gigabyte. That roughly matches his current average selling price forecast for the company.

He did add a caveat. These long-term agreements “do not completely remove risk of future downcycles,” but they “do significantly alleviate downside risk.” Newman estimates that even in a price collapse worse than past industry downturns, around 60% of expected volumes would still sit under long-term agreement protection.

The Numbers Behind the Call

Newman lifted his earnings forecasts to match his more confident outlook. He now projects fiscal 2027 earnings per share of $243 and fiscal 2028 earnings per share of $272 in his base case.

His bull-case numbers go further still, reaching $350 for fiscal 2027 and $400 for fiscal 2028. Those figures reflect his expectation that the current pricing environment holds up longer than most expect.

Newman believes the market hasn’t fully priced in what these changes mean for SanDisk’s valuation. “Lower volatility and higher sustainability of earnings are worth a higher PE,” he wrote, adding that less downside risk to earnings “is not being factored into current multiples.”

Wall Street agrees with the bullish tilt, just not quite as strongly. SNDK holds a Strong Buy consensus rating built on 14 Buy ratings and 2 Holds.

The average 12-month price target across analysts sits at $1,954.38. That’s about 5% below where the stock currently trades, meaning many analysts haven’t fully caught up to SanDisk’s massive run this year.

SanDisk shares have climbed 764% year to date. Newman’s $3,000 target now stands as one of the most aggressive forecasts on the Street.