SanDisk Jumps 11%, Western Digital Rises 7% After Apple Flags “Unavoidable” Memory Price Hikes

1 day ago 6

David Moadel

Thu, June 18, 2026 astatine 10:59 AM CDT 4 min read

Quick Read

SNDK surged 11% and WDC gained 7%, extending monolithic YTD runs of 817% and 349% arsenic representation pricing momentum accelerates.
Tim Cook called representation outgo increases "unavoidable" for Apple products, confirming suppliers clasp pricing powerfulness and sending the DRAM ETF up 10%.
SNDK carries a 72x trailing P/E with Reddit bullish sentiment astatine 85, raising blow-off apical concerns contempt analysts projecting proviso tightness done 2028.
Act now: the expert who called NVIDIA successful 2010 conscionable named his apical 10 AI stocks — and SanDisk didn't marque the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) banal is surging successful Thursday trading, up 11% to $2,170. Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) banal is besides flying, up 7% to astir $764. The catalyst landed earlier the unfastened and deed representation and retention names broadly.

A close-up, high-angle changeable of a vibrant greenish circuit committee with intricate metallic pathways and tiny physics components. Overlaid connected the circuit committee is simply a translucent airy greenish enactment graph showing a crisp upward trend, accompanied by a bid of rising barroom charts successful shades of bluish and green, indicating beardown growth. The inheritance is softly blurred with greenish bokeh lights, adding depth.

The trigger came from Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, who told the Wall Street Journal that surging representation and retention spot costs are forcing terms increases connected Apple products. Cook called the hikes "unavoidable" and described the proviso backdrop arsenic having "become unsustainable."

That's a striking awesome coming from the world's largest consumer-electronics buyer. Traders are speechmaking it arsenic nonstop confirmation of the representation pricing tailwind some SanDisk and Western Digital person been riding.

Tim Cook's Memory Comments Light the Fuse

Apple sources NAND flash retention from suppliers including Western Digital, SanDisk, and Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU), truthful the read-through to SanDisk banal and Western Digital banal is immediate. If Apple is openly absorbing higher representation costs and passing them through, suppliers are presumed to beryllium capturing pricing power.

The fundamentals are already pointed that way. SanDisk delivered a blowout fiscal Q3 2026, reporting EPS of $23.41 versus $14.66 expected connected gross of $5.95 billion, up 251% twelvemonth implicit twelvemonth (YoY), with its datacenter conception unsocial climbing 645% YoY. Western Digital's Q3 FY2026 was likewise strong, with non-GAAP gross borderline of 51%, the company's archetypal speechmaking supra 50% successful caller memory.

Western Digital CEO Irving Tan framed the request representation bluntly, stating that "virtually each AI workload, from training, inference, agentic AI to carnal AI, creates information that is stored persistently and cost-efficiently connected HDDs." Cook's comments validated that thesis from the purchaser side.

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