Postaus

📊 Sandisk Beat the Quarter—But the Market Wanted More Sandisk delivered another strong earnings report, yet the stock slipped after hours as investors looked past the headline beat and focused on future expectations. Key Q4 highlights: 💰 Revenue: $8.97B, up 51% QoQ and 372% YoY 📈 Non-GAAP EPS: $39.25 🔄 Board approved an additional $14B share repurchase, increasing the remaining authorization to $15.5B 💵 Non-GAAP gross margin: 84.6% 💸 Free cash flow: $7.08B ($5.04B adjusted for Flash Ventures and new business model agreements) The quarter also highlighted how uneven the NAND market remains: 📊 Around two-thirds of sequential revenue growth came from higher NAND pricing, while one-third came from increased shipment volumes. 🖥️ Datacenter revenue doubled quarter over quarter to $2.98B, driven by AI infrastructure demand. 📱 Consumer revenue declined 32%, underscoring continued weakness in traditional end markets. Despite the impressive results, investors were disappointed with the outlook. Sandisk guided fiscal Q1 revenue to $10.3B–$10.8B and non-GAAP EPS to $44–$46—solid guidance, but not enough to exceed the market's elevated expectations. At the same time, management expects non-GAAP gross margins of 83%–85%, suggesting profitability should remain exceptionally strong. Looking further ahead, the AI story continues to strengthen. Sandisk has now signed 10 New Business Model (NBM) agreements, including several new customers, improving long-term demand visibility. The company also partnered with SK hynix to introduce the industry's first open High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) specification through the Open Compute Project, targeting up to 512GB per package and 3TB/s bandwidth for AI inference workloads. The key question for investors is whether today's growth is being driven primarily by cyclical NAND pricing or whether AI-driven storage demand can support a more durable expansion. With Investor Day on August 13 approaching, management will have an opportunity to provide more clarity on the long-term outlook for AI storage, HBF adoption, and sustain