Sandisk Q4 2026 Earnings: Sales Nearly Quadruple as AI Data Centers Fuel NAND Demand
Sandisk topped Wall Street's profit and sales expectations as booming AI data-center demand for flash memory drove margins sharply higher and pushed guidance for the next quarter even higher.
| Q4 2026 | Reported | Expected | Surprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| EPS | $39.25 | $35.14 | +11.7% |
| Revenue | $8.96B | $8.56B | +4.7% |
Key takeaways
- Both profit and sales came in well above what Wall Street analysts had been expecting, continuing a run of outsized beats for the flash-memory maker.
- The strength was overwhelmingly driven by data centers: memory chips sold to AI server and cloud customers made up about 38% of Sandisk’s shipments by year-end, up from roughly 12% a year earlier, making it the company’s fastest-growing business.
- Profitability jumped even faster than sales. The fundamentals show gross margin near 71% and net margin above 56% on a trailing-twelve-month basis — a sign the company is capturing much more profit from each dollar of chips sold, largely because NAND flash memory has been in short supply, giving Sandisk more pricing power rather than just selling more volume.
- Management said the quarter’s actual gross margin came in well above the range it had guided to a few months earlier, another sign that memory prices rose faster than the company itself anticipated.
- CEO David Goeckeler said AI is ‘fundamentally a memory centric, storage intensive problem’ that is reshaping demand for NAND flash, and pointed to talks directly with the CEOs and CFOs of major customers as evidence of how central the company has become to AI infrastructure buildouts.
- Looking ahead, Sandisk guided for next quarter’s revenue and profit to rise again from already-elevated levels, and for gross margin to stay in the mid-80% range — signaling management expects the current memory-chip upcycle, fueled by AI demand, to continue rather than cool off.
- The company also expanded its stock buyback authorization to $15.5 billion, a capital-return move made possible by the strong cash generation reflected in a trailing return on equity above 93%.
- Despite beating estimates and raising guidance, Sandisk shares fell after the report, as some investors had built in even higher expectations following the stock’s sharp run-up over the prior year.
Q4 2026 in context
| Metric | Jul 2026 | Jun 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $9.0B | $1.9B | +371.6% |
| Net income | $6.9B | -$23M | +30113.0% |
| Free cash flow | $7.1B | $49M | +14355.1% |
| Gross margin | 84.6% | 26.2% | +58.4 pts |
| Operating margin | 78.5% | 0.9% | +77.5 pts |
| Net margin | 77.0% | -1.2% | +78.2 pts |
Figures for the quarter ended Jul 2026 and the quarter ended Jun 2025, as reported to the SEC. Fourth-quarter flows are derived as the fiscal year minus its first three quarters.
How the stock took it
Sandisk Corp closed at $1427.62 on Aug 4, 2026, the last session before the report, and at $1258.58 on Aug 6, 2026, the first session after it — -11.8% across the report.
| Earlier report | Close before | Close after | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 1, 2026 | $1096.51 | $1255.86 | +14.5% |
| Jan 30, 2026 | $539.30 | $665.24 | +23.4% |
| Nov 7, 2025 | $207.69 | $267.95 | +29.0% |
Closes from the market's daily record. Each figure spans the report date — from the last session that closed before it to the first that closed after — because a company may report before the open or after the close.
Fundamentals
| Metric | Value | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Gross margin | 71.5% | Trailing 12 months |
| Operating margin | 61.2% | Trailing 12 months |
| Net profit margin | 56.5% | Trailing 12 months |
| Pretax margin | 64.3% | Trailing 12 months |
| EPS | $72.89 | Trailing 12 months |
| Revenue growth (YoY) | 175.3% | Trailing 12 months |
| Return on equity | 93.1% | Trailing 12 months |
Sources: company report · earnings call · Yahoo Finance