SanDisk's "Unthinkable" Forecast Boosted Shares of Memory Manufacturers in Asia

Shares of Asian memory and chip manufacturing equipment makers surged following an optimistic forecast from the U.S.-based company SanDisk. This added confidence to a market that had already risen on the back of earnings reports from tech giants.

Investors saw Sandisk’s presentation as confirmation that the AI boom will continue to fuel the industry for a long time, according to Bloomberg. Shares of SanDisk’s partner, Japan’s Kioxia, rose as much as 8.7% on August 14, while those of Taiwan’s Nanya Technology rose 5.5%. Japanese equipment manufacturer Advantest gained 7.8% at the opening of trading in Tokyo, while South Korea’s SK Hynix rose 6.5% in Seoul.

The Bloomberg Asian Semiconductor Index rose as much as 1.6% at the peak of trading. It has rebounded by more than 19% from its July low, recovering from last month’s sharp sell-off.

SanDisk outlined its growth plan for the rest of the decade to Wall Street and promised to return 100% of its excess cash to shareholders. The company’s stock jumped 13.7% on August 13 in New York, bringing its gain since the start of the week to 25.8%. Other U.S. memory and storage manufacturers also posted gains, according to MarketWatch: Micron Technology rose 4.2%, and Western Digital rose 7.3%.

Just a few years ago, accurate long-term forecasts from flash memory manufacturers would have been “unthinkable,” wrote Andrew Jackson of Ortus Advisors. In his view, multi-year contracts—rather than sales at volatile spot prices for memory—could smooth out the sharp ups and downs that are traditional for the industry.

SanDisk has such agreements with eight customers, two of whom expanded their contracts in the past quarter. The average contract term is about four years. They cover half of shipments in fiscal year 2027 and about two-thirds in fiscal year 2028, according to MarketWatch. SanDisk expects these agreements to yield “extremely attractive returns even at minimum prices,” the publication quotes Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani as saying.

SanDisk ended the first half of 2026 as the clear leader in the S&P 500 in terms of returns—its stock rose 858% from January through June. Micron Technology and Intel, which rounded out the top three, gained 304% and 278%, respectively, since January. The July sell-off in the tech sector did not spare SanDisk, but even after it, the stock is trading 544% higher than at the start of the year.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor