Sandisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) shares climbed 13% to about $83 in midday trading on Thursday after Morgan Stanley increased its target price on the computer memory-maker to $96 per share, from $70, while maintaining its ‘Overweight’ rating.
The brokerage firm also bumped the stock up to Top Pick status.
Morgan Stanley attributed the target increase to its bullish outlook on the NAND (NOT AND) memory market, driven by recent large orders from multiple hyperscalers for NAND enterprise solid-state drives (eSSDs), totaling tens of exabytes.
The broker anticipated the total NAND market to reach 250 to 300 exabytes for calendar year 2025, potentially driving NAND pricing higher as the AI environment shifts from building AI large language models toward using them to answer user questions, called AI inference.
Morgan Stanley also noted that Sandisk’s BICs 8 transition could serve as a catalyst for market share gains.
Sandisk shares have soared about 132% year to date.