SNDK ends the week with its most consequential analyst move yet — and a stock price that has now left the majority of Street targets in the dust.
Barclays made the decisive shift this morning. Thomas O'Malley upgraded SNDK to Overweight from Equal-Weight and lifted his target from $1,200 to $2,300 — a firm that had been among the more cautious voices as recently as May 1, when it raised to $1,200 but held its neutral stance. That reversal matters. The prior note flagged Barclays and Wells Fargo as the dissenters keeping Equal-Weight ratings while the rest of the Street scrambled higher. One of those dissenters has now crossed over. Citigroup, already at Buy, raised again last week to $2,025. The mean target of $1,493 is now well below the current close of $1,589 — the Street is no longer ahead of the stock, it's behind it. EPS momentum factor scores rank in the 97th percentile on both 30- and 90-day windows, which helps explain why targets keep moving: the earnings revisions cycle is still running hot.
The bull case — NAND supply discipline, data center SSD share gains, and pricing power via the Kioxia joint venture — has been vindicated by the price action. The bear case hasn't disappeared. Concentration risk in NAND remains real, and longer-term volume agreements could cap the upside in a demand downturn. Valuation is stretched: the P/E has climbed to roughly 14.6x and price-to-book sits near 7.9x, both up sharply over the past week as the stock added another 15%. EV/EBITDA near 12x is more moderate, but the earnings yield of just under 7% leaves little room for multiple expansion from here. The stock score's value pillar remains the weakest component at 33.9, consistent with a name that the market has priced for continued execution.
Short positioning tells a more cautious subplot. Short interest has risen 42% over the past month to 7.8% of the free float — a meaningful build, not a rounding error. Most of that increase came in the second half of May, with the position growing from around 9.5 million shares on May 8 to over 11.4 million shares now. That's a growing bet against the trend, not a retreat. The borrow market remains extremely loose — availability is running at roughly 2,700% of short interest, meaning there is no shortage of supply for new shorts. Cost to borrow has collapsed 96% over the past month to under 0.05%, confirming how undemanding the lending conditions are. The short score of 39.6 sits in the 36th percentile — not an extreme reading either way. The picture is one of a growing but uncrowded short position building into a stock that keeps making new highs.
Options traders have turned more defensive alongside the price surge. The put/call ratio has climbed to 1.29 — its highest reading of the past year — and is running nearly two standard deviations above its 20-day average of 1.18. That's not a panic hedge, but it does indicate that as SNDK has broken above analyst targets, options buyers are paying more attention to downside protection. The earnings history offers some context: the last two prints each produced double-digit one-day gains — 11.5% after the April 30 release — with five-day moves extending to 26% and 41% respectively. The next event is scheduled for August 14.
Insiders are selling consistently into the rally. CEO David Goeckeler sold on both May 20 and May 21, collecting roughly $3.4 million across the two days. CFO Luis Felipe Visoso sold $2.4 million on May 21. The CTO, Chief Legal Officer, and Chief Accounting Officer have all sold in May. Net insider activity over 90 days totals approximately $22 million in sales. These are low-significance trades by ORTEX scoring — likely pre-planned programmes — but the direction is uniform and the timing, into a 60% one-month price surge, is hard to ignore. WDC and STX, SNDK's closest US-listed peers, each gained roughly 14% on the week — a strong tape for storage broadly — though neither has come close to matching SNDK's one-month trajectory of 61%.
With the stock now trading above every major analyst target bar Barclays' fresh $2,300 and Citigroup's $2,025, the next leg of the narrative is whether the remaining cautious names — Wells Fargo at $1,250, RBC at $1,000 — capitulate or hold their ground into August earnings.
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