The top-performing stock in the S&P 500 has risen 600% this year. Evercore expects it to rise another 80%.

Shares of memory chip maker SanDisk have fallen 21% since the beginning of July, but they are still up more than 600% since the start of the year: this is the best performance in the broad-market S&P 500 index. However, Evercore ISI is confident that the rally is far from over: it has more than doubled its price target for the stock and now expects it to rise by another 80% or so. On Monday, July 13, the data storage manufacturer’s stock was down 13%.

Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani raised his price target for SanDisk shares from $1,400 to $3,100, according to Barron’s. This is more than 80% higher than the stock’s closing price on July 13.

According to the analyst, investors are “underestimating the sustainability” of the company’s earnings and free cash flow over the next few years, as well as its continued ability to raise prices. Evercore forecasts that the imbalance between supply and demand will persist throughout 2027.

In an optimistic scenario, Daryanani predicts that SanDisk’s stock could rise to as high as $4,000—more than double the current price. According to him, new long-term supply agreements are driving a “structural shift in the predictability of SanDisk’s earnings,” despite investor skepticism. Previously, Wall Street viewed the stock performance of memory manufacturers as cyclical, tied to the replacement cycles of consumer devices; but due to the AI boom, demand for memory has become constant, and contracts with hyperscalers and other customers have become long-term.

During Monday's trading session, SanDisk shares briefly fell by more than 13%, making them among the worst performers in the S&P 500 for the day. However, according to SlickCharts, they are the top performers in the index so far this year.

Citi analysts on Monday reaffirmed their $2,500 price target for SanDisk shares, according to Barron’s. “We are most confident in the stocks of data storage manufacturers due to the extremely favorable supply-demand balance, which is supported by steady demand from AI-related data centers for both NAND memory (chips that store information without requiring a constant power source. — Oninvest) and hard drives,” they noted. Citi also reaffirmed its positive short-term outlook for the next 90 days for data storage device manufacturers: not only for SanDisk, but also for Seagate Technology and Western Digital.

On July 5, Goldman Sachs raised its price target for SanDisk from $1,200 to $2,200, maintaining its “buy” rating, according to TheStreet. The bank expects the NAND memory shortage to persist longer than the market anticipates, and limited expansion of production capacity in the market will support the company’s prices and profits at least through much of 2027. The bank also cites the growth in SSD shipments to major hyperscalers and SanDisk’s shift toward multi-year contracts with customers as additional factors, as these increase the predictability of revenue and earnings and reduce the cyclical risks of the business. Against this backdrop, Goldman has doubled its estimate for the company’s normalized earnings per share from $55 to $110.

Recently, investors have been questioning whether the rally in memory manufacturers’ stocks can continue; nevertheless, 79% of analysts covering SanDisk stock recommend buying it, according to Barron’s. This is the highest percentage since the company spun off from Western Digital in February 2025, the publication emphasizes. According to MarketWatch, Wall Street’s consensus price target is $2,326, which is more than 21% above the closing price on July 10.

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