Sandisk Shares Drop Following Nvidia CEO Departure and Memory Sector Caution
Sandisk Corporation shares declined roughly 4% to 5% following an abrupt leadership change at Nvidia and profit-taking across artificial intelligence hardware and memory suppliers.
Shares of Sandisk Corporation moved down on Thursday, falling 4.12% according to TradingKey and dropping about 5% to trade at $928.51 according to Benzinga Pro data reported by Yahoo Finance. The pullback followed a 13.69% jump on Wednesday to $977.69. The downward move arrived amid broader market softness, with S&P 500 futures slipping 0.3% and the Technology Equipment sector dropping 0.78%.
Pressure on hardware providers accelerated after Nvidia announced that co-founder Jensen Huang resigned immediately as president, chief executive, and board member. Nvidia named Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim chief executive while searching for a successor. Nvidia shares fell 8.40% in premarket trading. Although Sandisk supplies enterprise NAND flash memory and solid-state drives rather than graphics processors, its valuation remains sensitive to shifts in sentiment across the data center supply chain.
Market participants also engaged in profit-taking following a multi-session surge in memory and computing names. While data center expansion continues, investors expressed caution over the longevity of the NAND flash pricing cycle and scrutinized cloud infrastructure budgets. Sandisk is also managing distinct segment trends; financial disclosures revealed that consumer flash and client device sales fell 29% sequentially, even as cloud customers expanded multiyear commitments.
Derivatives trading and technical levels added to the volatility ahead of an eight-for-one stock split scheduled for November 19, with derivative contract adjustments planned for November 20. Sandisk shares failed to clear resistance at $1,011, trading roughly 18.6% below the 20-day moving average of $1,144.70, 36% below the 50-day average of $1,454.69, and 27.3% below the 200-day average of $1,280.67.
Despite the retreat, recent operating results highlight massive corporate expansion since Sandisk separated from Western Digital in February 2025. In late October, Sandisk reported first-quarter fiscal 2027 net income of $8.1 billion, up from $112 million a year earlier, on revenue of $11.03 billion compared to $2.3 billion. Analysts at Evercore ISI recently reiterated an outperform rating with a $2,500 target, while Wells Fargo lowered its forecast to $1,300 with an equal-weight stance.