🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

SanDisk’s results ran far ahead of expectations

• SanDisk posted fiscal third-quarter revenue of US$5.95 billion with a 78.4% gross margin. Analysts had expected US$4.4 billion to US$4.8 billion in revenue and margins of 65% to 67% 1.
• The jump was sharp. Revenue was only US$2.3 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2026 2.
• The rebound came after a rough stretch in early 2025, when the enterprise solid-state drive (SSD) market for data-center and corporate buyers faced excess inventory and a nearly 20% drop in average selling prices 3.

Long-term contracts could steady the memory market’s boom-bust swings

• SanDisk has signed US$42 billion in long-term supply agreements. That could mark a change in the NAND flash market, which has long been hit by price swings. NAND flash is the memory used in SSDs and other storage devices.
• Those deals lock in more than a third of fiscal 2027 output, giving SanDisk and its largest customers more certainty. Those customers are mainly hyperscalers, the large cloud-computing companies building AI infrastructure.
• A steadier supply outlook could make the storage layer for AI easier to plan around, which may speed AI adoption across the tech industry 2.
• It could also tighten market concentration. One market-research report puts the combined share of Samsung, Western Digital (SanDisk’s former parent company), Micron and Intel at about 70% 4.