SanDisk (SNDK.US) releases long-term luxury guidelines: medium to high double-digit revenue growth, gross margin of about 80%, FCF profit margin of about 50%

The Zhitong Finance App learned that SanDisk (SNDK.US) announced its long-term growth strategy and new multi-year financial framework on Investor Day 2026 on Thursday. The company said that as artificial intelligence (AI) expands further from training to the inference stage, data center demand for high-performance, high-capacity, and low-power storage will increase significantly, and the potential market size of enterprise data center flash memory is expected to expand to 1.2ZB by 2030. Meanwhile, SanDisk expects revenue to maintain medium to high double-digit growth in the 2028-2030 fiscal year, maintain non-GAAP gross margin of about 80%, and adjusted free cash flow margin reach about 50%.

SanDisk Chairman and CEO David Goeckeler said that the company's current strong performance comes from continued execution of the established strategy over the past 18 months. With decades of NAND flash technology accumulation, system-level technical capabilities, diversified product portfolios, capital-efficient operating models, and the ability to cover a complete technology stack, the company has established a differentiated competitive advantage and will continue to serve different terminal markets to create long-term value for shareholders.

SanDisk believes that the rapid spread of AI is changing traditional storage architectures. As AI inference workloads grow and token usage rapidly increases, KV Cache (key-value cache) is reshaping the memory and storage levels of AI systems, and AI data centers will become more “storage-intensive” in the future. The company expects the potential market size of enterprise data center flash memory to reach 1.2ZB by 2030. SanDisk said its product portfolio will focus on meeting the demands of AI infrastructure for higher performance, lower power consumption and higher storage density, and sees AI inference as an important driving force for future business growth.

On the technical side, SanDisk announced a two-dimensional expansion strategy based on CMOS direct bonding to array (CBA) technology, which can develop customized products according to rapidly changing market needs while improving capital use efficiency. The newly launched BiCS9 QLC technology is the first example of this strategy, combining proven BiCS8 storage arrays with CMOS wafers based on BiCS10 technology to deliver the high performance required by AI workloads in a more capital-efficient manner. At the same time, the next generation BiCS10 QLC node's bit density is 60% higher than BiCS8, and the company says it will set new industry standards in terms of storage density, performance, and energy efficiency.

In addition to technology upgrades, SanDisk is reducing traditional cyclical fluctuations in the NAND industry through a new business model agreement (NBM). Such agreements include committed procurement volumes, binding contract frameworks, minimum financial guarantees, and structured pricing mechanisms, which help to better match customer needs with the company's production capacity plans. At present, SanDisk has signed NBM agreements with 8 customers. The relevant agreements are expected to cover about 50% of the company's bit shipments in fiscal year 2027 and increase to about two-thirds in fiscal year 2028. The company said NBM is rapidly becoming its main business model, which is expected to improve the predictability of future revenue and cash flow, and support more stable long-term profit growth.

SanDisk also focused on HBF technology and viewed it as an important product direction for grasping the storage needs of the AI inference era. The company said that HBF is becoming an important technology for dealing with new opportunities in the AI reasoning era, and currently the industrial ecosystem surrounding HBF is also gradually being formed to support wider technology adoption in the future.

On this Investor Day, SanDisk also unveiled for the first time a long-term financial model covering the 2028-2030 fiscal year. The company expects to achieve medium to high double-digit revenue growth during this period, which is basically in line with the increase in bit shipments; non-GAAP gross margin is expected to remain at about 80%, non-GAAP operating margin is about 75%, and operating expenses account for about 5% of revenue. After considering taxes, capital expenses, and working capital needed to support growth, the company expects an adjusted free cash flow margin of approximately 50%.

SanDisk Chief Financial Officer Luis Visoso said the company is in a large and rapidly growing market with favorable industry drivers. The company will focus on balancing growth, business sustainability, and return on capital. After meeting the investments required to grow the business, SanDisk plans to return 100% of the remaining cash to shareholders. Management said that confidence in the sustainability of this long-term financial model comes largely from multi-year NBM agreements signed with customers and customer relationships based on technological innovation and deep cooperation.

Overall, SanDisk's Investor Day sees the growth in storage demand brought about by AI reasoning as an important pillar of its future long-term strategy, and hopes to reduce the cyclical impact of the traditional storage industry while expanding the AI data center business through NAND technology upgrades, new storage technologies such as HBF, and long-term customer agreements. Enterprise data center flash memory market expectations of 1.2 ZB by 2030, as well as non-GAAP gross margin of about 80% and adjusted free cash flow profit margin targets of about 50% for the 2028-2030 fiscal year, have become the most watched indicators in this long-term strategy.

As of press release, SanDisk's stock price had surged more than 13% to $1521.9.