Sandisk‘s stock popped 14% after the company crushed Wall Street’s fiscal second-quarter estimates, as the artificial intelligence boom sent demand for its chips skyrocketing.
The flash storage memory company reported earnings of $6.20 per share, excluding items, blowing past the $3.62 per share expected by analysts surveyed by FactSet. Revenue totaled $3.03 billion, topping a forecast of $2.69 billion.
Shares had jumped more than 20% in the premarket.
Sandisk’s third-quarter forecast also outpaced expectations for analysts.
Sandisk guided for between $4.4 billion and $4.8 billion in revenue for the quarter. That blew away the $2.93 billion expected by FactSet. The company expects adjusted earnings between $12 and $14 per share in the third quarter, more than double the $5.11 estimate from analysts.
Raymond James analysts upgrade the stock to an outperform rating, citing Sandisk’s pricing momentum as new supply struggles to come online.
“We know demand is exceptionally strong and likely only growing, supply is tightening to the point of potentially being sold out for years,” the firm wrote, believing the company should benefit from “longer-lived” datacenter production.
Memory companies like Sandisk are seeing a boost from skyrocketing memory need, as businesses race to funnel more storage supply into the power-hungry datacenter buildout that’s fueling the AI revolution.
The company’s datacenter business grew 64%, sequentially.
This backdrop has also created a supply and demand imbalance that’s allowed memory companies to hike prices and maintain strong margins.
Sandisk said it expects third-quarter gross margins to range between 65% and 67%, far ahead of the 49.3% expected by analysts polled by StreetAccount.
The memory shortage has hit multiple areas of the tech sector, and Apple reported supply issues of its own when it reported first-quarter earnings on Thursday.
CEO Tim Cook said access to advanced node manufacturing was keeping it from making more iPhones, but the company would be hit by rising memory prices.
Cook said Apple was looking at “a range of options to deal with that.”
