← Sandisk Corporation

SNDK · Forward model · NBM Floor case

The NBM Floor case, 20 quarters out

Each segment is projected from its own operating driver, rolled up into consolidated cash flow, and discounted back to a fair value per share. The assumptions below are editable — change them and every number on this page moves with them.

WHAT IS REPORTED. Sandisk runs a single reportable operating segment, so the only thing split three ways is revenue: the Datacenter/Edge/Consumer End Market Summary published in every earnings release. All ten quarters here are as reported and sum to consolidated revenue to the dollar in each one - $1,705M, $1,760M, $1,883M, $1,876M, $1,695M, $1,901M, $2,308M, $3,025M, $5,950M and $8,965M. Fiscal 2024 Q1 and Q2 are absent from every vertical because Sandisk did not file separately before the February 2025 separation and that split has never been published; nothing is back-filled from Western Digital, whose Cloud/Client/Consumer lines mixed HDD with flash. The FY2025 Cloud/Client/Consumer labels and the FY2026 Datacenter/Edge/Consumer labels are the same three lines renamed - the FY2025 totals are identical under both. UNITS ARE AN INDEX. Sandisk discloses exabyte GROWTH by end market and has never disclosed an exabyte LEVEL, so every unit driver here starts at 100 in the basis quarter and price per index point is that quarter's revenue divided by 100. Nothing in the traces is a dollars-per-gigabyte figure the company published. MARGINS ARE COMPANY-LEVEL. No profitability is reported below the company line - not in the release, not in the deck, not in the 10-K. The 84.6% basis margin and the 80.0% terminal margin on each vertical are Sandisk's own non-GAAP GROSS margins, applied uniformly and tagged assumed; operating expense is charged once at the corporate line at 5.0% of revenue, which is where the FQ1 2027 guide of $520-540M on a $10.55bn midpoint lands and what the Investor Day calls 'around five percent'. Gross less opex gives a 78.9% operating margin in the first projected quarter against the 79.2% just reported, and 75.2% across FY2031 against the ~75% guided for FY2028-FY2030. No Datacenter margin premium is invented; the one margin-relevant fact that is derivable points the other way, since Datacenter earns about 0.87x the company average revenue per bit. CAPEX IS ON A GROSS BASIS. 6.3% falling to 6.0% of revenue is Sandisk's GROSS investment including its share of Flash Ventures capex, matching the $562M shown for the basis quarter and the 'approximately 6% of revenue' guided for FY2027. It is NOT the $153M of cash capex (1.7%) that Sandisk's own reported free cash flow deducts. The 10-K's $6,559M of Flash Ventures commitments is deliberately not added as a separate corporate programme: its FY2027 tranche of $2,627M is 5.8% of a $48.96bn consensus year, so it IS the 6% guide, and carrying both would fund the joint venture twice. FREE CASH FLOW IS BEFORE WORKING CAPITAL. The engine takes EBITDA less gross capex less cash tax at the guided 15% non-GAAP rate. It prints a 61.8% margin in the first projected quarter, above the 56.2% adjusted free cash flow margin of the basis quarter and above the ~50% Sandisk guides for FY2028-FY2030, because management's 50% is stated 'after accounting for taxes, capital expenses, and working capital to support growth' and this model does not carry a working-capital line. Read the FCF margins as pre-working-capital. NO SEASONALITY ANYWHERE. Ten quarters of per-vertical history exist, spanning only two complete fiscal-year windows, one of which was a 53-week year with a 14-week first quarter. The window-to-window spread exceeds the candidate signal in all three lines - 1.423 for Datacenter, 0.718 for Edge, 0.274 for Consumer - and the three verticals compete for one capped bit pool, so Consumer's fiscal-Q4 trough is the mirror of Datacenter's peak rather than a season. Fitting factors would have projected a 2.3x Datacenter quarter every fiscal Q4 forever. Consumer is worth re-testing after FY2027 closes. WHERE THIS SPEC DEPARTS FROM THE RESEARCH BRIEF, AND WHY. (1) The brief's assumed volume rates blended to roughly 10% a year, below the mid-teens sellable bit growth Sandisk guides for FY2027; Datacenter is set to 6.5% a quarter instead of 4.0% so the bit-weighted blend comes to between 16% and 18% a year across the horizon whichever way the undisclosed Edge/Consumer bit split falls, consistent with the guide and with the disclosed allocation shift from 12% to 38% of bits. (2) The brief set the first quarter's price drift to zero, which would have printed $9.26bn against a guided $10.30-10.80bn; +14.0% in all three lines lands the quarter on the guided midpoint and implies about $45.7 of non-GAAP EPS on 155M guided diluted shares, inside the guided $44.00-46.00. The drift then decays at 0.35 a quarter to a negative terminal, so the guided quarter is a step and not a trend. (3) The exit is 6.0x terminal EBITDA rather than 9.0x, because the market itself prices Sandisk at 5.6x this model's FY2027 EBITDA today and memory comparables do not hold premium multiples on peak-cycle earnings. SHARES AND NET CASH. 146,419,001 shares outstanding at 7 August 2026 per the 10-K cover, the same count behind the $219.5bn market capitalisation. The guided FQ1 2027 diluted count is about 155 million, so a fully diluted fair value per share would be roughly 5.5% lower. Net cash of $6,539M is $4,762M of cash plus $1,777M of marketable equity securities against zero debt; a cash-only definition gives $4,762M and the equity securities are mark-to-market, which is what inverted GAAP EPS above non-GAAP this quarter. ONE DATA CAVEAT. data/companies/sndk/series.json carries $2,310M and $3,030M for 2026 Q1 and Q2 where the End Market Summary and income statement say $2,308M and $3,025M, and it mixes GAAP and non-GAAP EPS across 2026 Q3 and Q4. This model uses the released figures throughout.

The one case with a contract under it. Sandisk states a minimum of $93.9bn of contracted NBM revenue computed at floor pricing across eight customers, weighted average duration above four years, and says the economics carry attractive margins even at floor pricing. This case runs the spot market to no premium at all and lets only the contracted book carry the business: revenue converges toward the low twenties of billions a year against a $48.96bn consensus for FY2027 alone. What it does not reach: it says nothing about the roughly half of FY2027 bits and third of FY2028 bits that are not under NBM, and the floor applies to the variable pricing component only, so the realised floor depends on a fixed/variable split Sandisk has not disclosed.

SNDK REVENUE MODEL

Latest: $5.46B (2031Q4E)

Period Value
2024Q3 $1.71B
2024Q4 $1.76B
2025Q1 $1.88B
2025Q2 $1.88B
2025Q3 $1.70B
2025Q4 $1.90B
2026Q1 $2.31B
2026Q2 $3.02B
2026Q3 $5.95B
2026Q4 $8.96B
2027Q1E $9.89B
2027Q2E $10.38B
2027Q3E $10.52B
2027Q4E $10.44B
2028Q1E $10.21B
2028Q2E $9.88B
2028Q3E $9.52B
2028Q4E $9.13B
2029Q1E $8.75B
2029Q2E $8.37B
2029Q3E $8.00B
2029Q4E $7.65B
2030Q1E $7.32B
2030Q2E $7.01B
2030Q3E $6.71B
2030Q4E $6.43B
2031Q1E $6.16B
2031Q2E $5.91B
2031Q3E $5.68B
2031Q4E $5.46B

What drives each segment

Datacenter

Units × price
Basis quarter$2.98B
Final quarter$3.24B
Implied CAGR+2%
Share of revenue, final quarter59%
PV of segment cash flow$36.40B

Enterprise and hyperscale SSD, and the reason the stock re-rated: 12% of Sandisk's bits in Q4 FY2025, 38% one year later, $2,977M of revenue in the basis quarter against $213M a year earlier. Almost all of the NBM contracting sits here and in Edge. The risk is not demand - management says NAND stays on allocation beyond calendar 2027 - it is that this line's revenue per gigabyte was set at a shortage price.

Last four quarters
2026 Q1 $269M Reported
2026 Q2 $440M Reported
2026 Q3 $1.47B Reported
2026 Q4 $2.98B Reported
Compute-focused TLC enterprise SSDQLC high-capacity AI data-lake SSD (Stargate platform)Contracted NBM supply to hyperscale customers
Units 100/qtr growing +6.5% per quarter Index, not exabytes: 2026 Q4 = 100. Sandisk discloses bit growth per end market, never a level.
Price per unit $30M drifting +14.0% per quarter Basis revenue $2,977M / 100 index points. Derived, not a dollars-per-gigabyte figure Sandisk published.
Datacenter

Latest: $3.24B (2031Q4E)

Period Value
2024Q3 $97M
2024Q4 $170M
2025Q1 $300M
2025Q2 $250M
2025Q3 $197M
2025Q4 $213M
2026Q1 $269M
2026Q2 $440M
2026Q3 $1.47B
2026Q4 $2.98B
2027Q1E $3.39B
2027Q2E $3.67B
2027Q3E $3.85B
2027Q4E $3.94B
2028Q1E $3.99B
2028Q2E $3.99B
2028Q3E $3.97B
2028Q4E $3.93B
2029Q1E $3.88B
2029Q2E $3.83B
2029Q3E $3.77B
2029Q4E $3.71B
2030Q1E $3.65B
2030Q2E $3.59B
2030Q3E $3.53B
2030Q4E $3.47B
2031Q1E $3.41B
2031Q2E $3.36B
2031Q3E $3.30B
2031Q4E $3.24B

Assumptions & reasoning

  • Units are an INDEX, not exabytes: the basis quarter is 100 and price per index point is that quarter's revenue divided by 100. Sandisk discloses bit GROWTH by end market and has never published an exabyte LEVEL, so a physical unit count here would be an invented disclosure.
  • FY2026 disclosure splits this line into its two terms: exabytes shipped up almost 120% and revenue per gigabyte up almost 150%. Both are growth rates from the 10-K; neither is a level, which is why the driver runs on an index.
  • Volume grows 6.5% a quarter, faster than the company's mid-teens sellable bit growth, because the disclosed allocation shift - 12% of bits to 38% in four quarters - has to keep coming out of Edge and Consumer.
  • Economics are company-level, not segment-level. Sandisk runs a single reportable operating segment and publishes one gross margin line, so 84.6% basis and 80.0% terminal are the company's own non-GAAP gross margins applied uniformly; operating expense sits once at the corporate line, never inside a vertical.

Edge

Units × price
Basis quarter$5.43B
Final quarter$2.10B
Implied CAGR-17%
Share of revenue, final quarter38%
PV of segment cash flow$43.39B

Client SSD, embedded and removable flash into smartphones, PCs, tablets, automotive and robotics - the largest line at 60.6% of basis-quarter revenue. It is the purest price line in the business: FY2026 exabytes grew only high single digits while revenue per gigabyte rose almost 180%. Management says PCs and smartphones are working through a period of adjustment and expects those markets to return to growth in calendar 2027.

Last four quarters
2026 Q1 $1.39B Reported
2026 Q2 $1.68B Reported
2026 Q3 $3.66B Reported
2026 Q4 $5.43B Reported
Client SSD for PCsEmbedded flash for smartphones and tabletsAutomotive, robotics and on-device AI
Units 100/qtr growing +2.0% per quarter Index, not exabytes: 2026 Q4 = 100. Only bit growth is disclosed per end market, never a level.
Price per unit $54M drifting +14.0% per quarter Basis revenue $5,432M / 100 index points. Derived, not a published dollars-per-gigabyte price.
Edge

Latest: $2.10B (2031Q4E)

Period Value
2024Q3 $1.03B
2024Q4 $1.07B
2025Q1 $1.07B
2025Q2 $1.03B
2025Q3 $927M
2025Q4 $1.10B
2026Q1 $1.39B
2026Q2 $1.68B
2026Q3 $3.66B
2026Q4 $5.43B
2027Q1E $5.92B
2027Q2E $6.12B
2027Q3E $6.11B
2027Q4E $5.96B
2028Q1E $5.72B
2028Q2E $5.44B
2028Q3E $5.13B
2028Q4E $4.82B
2029Q1E $4.52B
2029Q2E $4.22B
2029Q3E $3.94B
2029Q4E $3.68B
2030Q1E $3.43B
2030Q2E $3.20B
2030Q3E $2.98B
2030Q4E $2.78B
2031Q1E $2.59B
2031Q2E $2.42B
2031Q3E $2.25B
2031Q4E $2.10B

Assumptions & reasoning

  • Units are an INDEX, not exabytes: the basis quarter is 100 and price per index point is that quarter's revenue divided by 100. Sandisk discloses bit GROWTH by end market and has never published an exabyte LEVEL, so a physical unit count here would be an invented disclosure.
  • The 180% FY2026 increase in revenue per gigabyte is the largest price move of the three lines and the one with the most to give back, which is why its terminal drift is the most negative at -2.5% a quarter.
  • The first projected quarter carries a +14.0% price drift in all three lines because the FQ1 2027 revenue guide of $10.30-10.80bn is a company number and no per-end-market guide exists; splitting it unevenly across the three would be inventing a disclosure Sandisk did not make.
  • Edge and Consumer bits cannot be separated from disclosure: only their combined 62% share of company bits follows from the 38% Datacenter figure.

Consumer

Units × price
Basis quarter$556M
Final quarter$117M
Implied CAGR-27%
Share of revenue, final quarter2%
PV of segment cash flow$3.53B

Retail cards, USB drives and consumer SSD - 6.2% of basis-quarter revenue and shrinking, because it is the residual claimant on the bit pool. FY2026 is the tell: Consumer exabytes fell mid-teens percent while revenue rose 29% on a low-fifties percent price increase, then the line fell 32% sequentially in a quarter the company grew 51%, as bits were pulled into Datacenter. Management calls it mix flexibility, and this is the line that gets sacrificed.

Last four quarters
2026 Q1 $652M Reported
2026 Q2 $907M Reported
2026 Q3 $820M Reported
2026 Q4 $556M Reported
Memory cardsUSB flash drivesConsumer and portable SSD
Units 100/qtr growing -1.5% per quarter Index, not exabytes: 2026 Q4 = 100. Sandisk publishes Consumer bit growth, never a bit level.
Price per unit $6M drifting +14.0% per quarter Basis revenue $556M / 100 index points. Derived; the basis quarter was itself a 32% sequential fall.
Consumer

Latest: $117M (2031Q4E)

Period Value
2024Q3 $573M
2024Q4 $523M
2025Q1 $514M
2025Q2 $598M
2025Q3 $571M
2025Q4 $585M
2026Q1 $652M
2026Q2 $907M
2026Q3 $820M
2026Q4 $556M
2027Q1E $585M
2027Q2E $585M
2027Q3E $566M
2027Q4E $535M
2028Q1E $498M
2028Q2E $459M
2028Q3E $420M
2028Q4E $383M
2029Q1E $348M
2029Q2E $316M
2029Q3E $286M
2029Q4E $259M
2030Q1E $235M
2030Q2E $213M
2030Q3E $192M
2030Q4E $174M
2031Q1E $157M
2031Q2E $142M
2031Q3E $129M
2031Q4E $117M

Assumptions & reasoning

  • Units are an INDEX, not exabytes: the basis quarter is 100 and price per index point is that quarter's revenue divided by 100. Sandisk discloses bit GROWTH by end market and has never published an exabyte LEVEL, so a physical unit count here would be an invented disclosure.
  • This is the vertical where a holiday season is visible, and it is still modelled aseasonal: the research brief measured a window-to-window spread of 0.274 against an FY2025 within-year amplitude of 0.15, with only two fiscal-year windows and one of them a 53-week year. An aseasonal path is modestly wrong in a repeating way; four factors fitted to two disagreeing windows would be wrong permanently.
  • At 6.2% of basis-quarter revenue a 10% error in this line moves consolidated revenue by 0.6%, so the model spends no further complexity here.
Scenarios

Where each case comes from

Bear case — primary sources

The primary sources this case is built from — filings, calls and posts. Where they are claims by an interested party rather than disclosures, every number in the Bear column is what happens if they are taken at face value.

Bull case — primary sources

The primary sources this case is built from — filings, calls and posts. Where they are claims by an interested party rather than disclosures, every number in the Bull column is what happens if they are taken at face value.

NBM Floor case — primary sources

The primary sources this case is built from — filings, calls and posts. Where they are claims by an interested party rather than disclosures, every number in the NBM Floor column is what happens if they are taken at face value.

Valuation

From cash flow to fair value

Present value of free cash flow, 20 quarters$65.42B
Terminal-year revenue$23.22B
Terminal-year EBITDA$15.14B
Exit multiple, on ebitda4.0x
Terminal value$60.58B
Discounted at 12.0% a year, terminal value becomes$34.37B
Enterprise value$99.79B
Net cash$6.54B
Equity value$106.33B
Shares0.15B
Fair value per share$726.22
Against the current price of $1,484.95-51%

Exit at 6.0x terminal EBITDA. Sandisk's own enterprise value of ~$213bn is 5.6x this model's FY2027 EBITDA of $38.0bn, and memory comparables do not sustain premium multiples on peak-cycle earnings, so the exit is set a shade above where the market prices the business today rather than at a growth multiple. Discounted at 11%, an equity-like rate for a debt-free business with no fab of its own that fell 55% in a month this summer.

Read the other way round: at $1,484.95 the market is paying 16.9x terminal-year revenue, holding every other assumption on this page fixed. That is the number to argue about.

Quarter by quarter

The projected path

Quarter DatacenterEdgeConsumer Revenue YoY EBITDA Capex FCF R40 PV of FCF
2027 Q1E $3.39B$5.92B$585M $9.89B +329% $6.82B $616M $5.27B +382 $5.12B
2027 Q2E $3.67B$6.12B$585M $10.38B +243% $7.09B $640M $5.48B +296 $5.18B
2027 Q3E $3.85B$6.11B$566M $10.52B +77% $7.14B $645M $5.52B +129 $5.07B
2027 Q4E $3.94B$5.96B$535M $10.44B +16% $7.04B $636M $5.44B +69 $4.86B
2028 Q1E $3.99B$5.72B$498M $10.21B +3% $6.84B $620M $5.29B +55 $4.59B
2028 Q2E $3.99B$5.44B$459M $9.88B -5% $6.60B $598M $5.10B +47 $4.30B
2028 Q3E $3.97B$5.13B$420M $9.52B -10% $6.33B $575M $4.89B +42 $4.01B
2028 Q4E $3.93B$4.82B$383M $9.13B -13% $6.05B $551M $4.68B +39 $3.73B
2029 Q1E $3.88B$4.52B$348M $8.75B -14% $5.78B $527M $4.46B +37 $3.46B
2029 Q2E $3.83B$4.22B$316M $8.37B -15% $5.52B $504M $4.26B +36 $3.21B
2029 Q3E $3.77B$3.94B$286M $8.00B -16% $5.26B $481M $4.06B +35 $2.98B
2029 Q4E $3.71B$3.68B$259M $7.65B -16% $5.02B $460M $3.88B +34 $2.76B
2030 Q1E $3.65B$3.43B$235M $7.32B -16% $4.80B $440M $3.71B +34 $2.56B
2030 Q2E $3.59B$3.20B$213M $7.01B -16% $4.59B $421M $3.54B +34 $2.38B
2030 Q3E $3.53B$2.98B$192M $6.71B -16% $4.39B $403M $3.39B +34 $2.21B
2030 Q4E $3.47B$2.78B$174M $6.43B -16% $4.20B $386M $3.24B +34 $2.06B
2031 Q1E $3.41B$2.59B$157M $6.16B -16% $4.02B $370M $3.11B +35 $1.92B
2031 Q2E $3.36B$2.42B$142M $5.91B -16% $3.86B $355M $2.98B +35 $1.79B
2031 Q3E $3.30B$2.25B$129M $5.68B -15% $3.70B $341M $2.86B +35 $1.67B
2031 Q4E $3.24B$2.10B$117M $5.46B -15% $3.56B $328M $2.75B +35 $1.56B

Every row is projected. A year-over-year change is shown only where the quarter it compares against exists — an em dash means there is no comparable quarter, not a flat year.

Track record

Model revisions

Assumptions are marked to reality as each quarter prints. Every change is appended here, with the fair value the model produced at the time, so the model's own history stays visible.

DateChangedFair value thenNote
2026-08-27 verticals, corporate, valuation, scenarios $2,439.91 First publication, from the FQ4 2026 release and 10-K, the 5 August guide and the 13 August Investor Day framework. Three unit drivers on a bit index with a +14.0% first-quarter price step decaying at 0.35 toward a negative terminal drift; company gross margin at the vertical, operating expense once at the corporate line; exit at 6.0x terminal EBITDA.