Sandisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) stock closed August 17 at $1,786.85, gaining roughly 28% over the previous five sessions and pushing this year’s gains just shy of 550%.
Looking at the numbers, January investors are sitting on some serious profits, as Sandisk has become the best-performing S&P 500 stock in 2026.
Indeed, a $1,000 investment in the memory giant on January 2, the first session of the year when the shares were trading at $275, would be worth around $6,500 at press time, August 18.
Sandisk stock rallies to become the best-performing S&P 500 stock in 2026
To put things into perspective, Sandisk has gained 62% in the past 14 days alone, adding $101 billion to its market value.
Now, Sandisk trades at roughly 8.3 times next-twelve-month earnings, while consensus forecasts put fiscal 2027 revenue at around $49 billion, up sharply from $20.2 billion in fiscal 2026. At the same time, gross margins are expected to remain around 84% next year before moving toward management’s roughly 80% long-term target.
What drove Sandisk’s rally is the underlying demand story. Namely, the company is increasingly positioning itself as a beneficiary of artificial intelligence (AI) inference, particularly through persistent KV cache.
On August 14, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told The Wall Street Journal that the administration was ‘not in favor’ of Apple sourcing memory from Chinese suppliers. While the warning was not directed at Sandisk, the underlying DRAM and NAND narrative has meant that Sandisk could benefit indirectly as demand shifts toward Western suppliers.
Chief Product Officer Khurram Ismail estimates that the persistent KV cache installed base could reach roughly one zettabyte by 2030, equivalent to what the entire flash industry ships in a year today.
Moreover, CFO Luis Visoso said the economics remain attractive ‘even at floor pricing,’ which Sandisk defines as roughly 80% gross margins. If those contracts deliver the expected results, the company could become less vulnerable to the extreme earnings swings..
Featured image via Shutterstock
