What Has Changed About Owning SanDisk Stock? Trefis Team Tue, November 10, 2026 at 9:36 AM EST 3 min read SNDK -2.55% ^GSPC -0.58% WDC -2.31% MU -1.69% STX -2.00% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
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Investors who own SanDisk (SNDK) hold a maker of NAND flash memory, the chips that store data in smartphones, PCs, and data centers. Those shareholders have watched the stock lose 45.2% over the month to November 9, 2026, while the S&P 500 fell 5.6%. SanDisk reported its fiscal first quarter of 2027 on October 29, 2026, providing the freshest accounts a worried holder can check. So what did that quarter change about the business you own?
SanDisk Now Keeps Most Of Every Sales Dollar
Over the twelve months to October 2, 2026, SanDisk kept 72.7% of its revenue as operating profit. At the typical quarter end from December 2012 to September 2025, leaving out the years SanDisk was part of Western Digital, that twelve-month margin was 14.6%. In the twelve months to October 3, 2025, it was just 5.0%, and the latest figure is higher than at any of 39 earlier quarter ends going back to fiscal 2009.
The cash came with it. SanDisk turned 59.9% of its revenue into free cash flow over the same twelve months, compared with 10.6% at the typical quarter end before. For a shareholder, this is plainly good news: the company now earns and collects far more on every dollar it sells.
Why Is SanDisk Earning So Much More Now?
SanDisk is earning more because it is selling more flash memory at higher prices, management said on the October 29 call. Revenue in the fiscal first quarter was $11.0 billion, up 377.9% from a year earlier and 23% from the prior quarter. Management said about 60% of the quarter's revenue growth came from volume and 40% from pricing, and that higher volumes and pricing also lifted its gross margin.
Data center revenue was $4.8 billion in the quarter, up 61% from the quarter before. Management sees a lasting rise in NAND demand, driven especially by AI. Management said about half of its 2027 output is already under long-term partnerships with customers.
You do not yet know how long the higher prices will hold. Consumer revenue fell 29% from the prior quarter as that market adjusted to higher pricing. Management advised caution on growth from the second fiscal quarter to the third, which it said is normally SanDisk's weakest.
What SanDisk's Profits Mean For Your Money
Those profits come at a low multiple. SanDisk stock trades at 6.7 times its earnings over the last twelve months, against 22.3 for the S&P 500 at the November 9 close.
SanDisk is also handing its spare cash back to shareholders. It spent $5.0 billion on share buybacks over the last twelve months, equal to 3.9% of its market value. Its free cash flow in that period equal-led 13.4% of its market value. It ended the quarter on October 2 with net cash of $4.96 billion, and management said it plans to stay debt-free while returning all of its excess cash to shareholders.
A year ago, a SanDisk holder owned a memory maker that kept a thin slice of its sales as profit. Today the same shares hold a company that keeps most of them, for as long as demand and prices for its chips stay strong. SanDisk's operating margin is the number to watch when it reports its fiscal second quarter, expected in January 2027.
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