Down 45%, is SanDisk stock a bargain buy or value trap?

SanDisk has taken investors connected a chaotic thrust successful caller months.

For instance, SanDisk (SNDK) banal is up astir 2,240% implicit the past 12 months, a instrumentality that turned a sleepy chipmaker into 1 of the astir talked-about stocks connected Wall Street.

Then came the drop. The spot banal has fallen 45% from its all-time high, making investors nervous. 

So which is it? Is SanDisk a bargain aft the pullback, oregon is this a informing motion that the rally already went excessively far? 

Meanwhile, the company's ain executives person laid retired a elaborate lawsuit for wherefore they judge the communicative is conscionable getting started.

What sparked SanDisk's monolithic rally

SanDisk manufactures NAND flash memory, which is utilized to store information successful phones, laptops, and information halfway servers. It became an autarkic nationalist institution aft splitting from Western Digital successful aboriginal 2025.

For astir of its history, SanDisk was a boring, cyclical business. That changed erstwhile artificial quality information centers started buying tremendous amounts of flash storage. 

CEO David Goeckeler explained the displacement during a fireside chat astatine the Mizuho Technology Conference connected June 9, 2026, stating:

"Data halfway has present become, oregon is rapidly becoming, the largest marketplace successful NAND." 

Goeckeler added that lawsuit spending forecasts for information centers person been revised higher 14 times successful a row.

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Goeckeler has repeatedly pointed to a method item that explains the request surge. As AI models determination from grooming into mundane use, known arsenic inference, they request a spot to store immense amounts of impermanent information called a KV cache.

He described NAND arsenic uniquely suited for that job. "NAND has ever been the astir scalable semiconductor technology," helium told the Mizuho audience, adding that arsenic AI systems standard globally, retention people becomes a bigger portion of the equation.

Speaking astatine the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference connected May 28, 2026, Goeckeler enactment it simply: NAND providers tin proviso tremendous volumes, portion much specialized representation similar HBM cannot standard the aforesaid way.

David Goeckeler, CEO of SanDisk, is banking connected beardown request for growthBloomberg/Getty Images

The bull lawsuit for SanDisk stock

Perhaps the bigger displacement is however SanDisk present sells its chips. Instead of negotiating prices each quarter, a signifier that fueled years of achy cycles, the institution has started signing what it calls caller concern models, oregon semipermanent proviso agreements.

By the fiscal 3rd quarter, SanDisk had signed 5 of these deals.