’Not your father’s Sandisk’: Rosenblatt starts coverage at Buy

Investing.com -- Rosenblatt has initiated coverage of Sandisk with a Buy rating, arguing in a note Tuesday that AI is transforming NAND flash memory from a commodity into a critical piece of computing infrastructure.

Analyst Kevin Cassidy set a $2,400 price target on Sandisk shares. He said new AI compute platforms are creating an opportunity to reposition NAND "from a commodity storage medium to a more system-critical component of AI infrastructure," as expanding model sizes and data-intensive inference prioritize density, performance, endurance and supply certainty over the lowest price.

Cassidy stated that Sandisk's roadmap, developed with manufacturing partner Kioxia over some 25 years, supports that shift.

Its BiCS8 and BiCS10 platforms are said to improve density with fewer 3D layers than some rivals, which he said should sustain a cost and performance advantage in AI-oriented enterprise storage.

The analyst pointed to management's fiscal 2028-to-2030 framework calling for mid-to-high-teens revenue growth, roughly 80% non-GAAP gross margin and a 50% adjusted free-cash-flow margin.

Cassidy believes new business model agreements with eight of the largest NAND customers, potentially covering about 65% of fiscal 2028 production, should improve demand visibility and reduce the sector's historical volatility.

On that basis, he conservatively estimated fiscal 2030 non-GAAP earnings of about $300 a share. His $2,400 target is based on 10 times his fiscal 2028 earnings estimate, a multiple he called conservative given the growth outlook, while reflecting execution risk and the chance NAND reverts to cyclical, commodity-like pricing.