After shares of memory company Sandisk (SNDK) skyrocketed over the past year, it has run into a lull. The stock is down 18% over the past three months, possibly due to profit-taking. However, memory names are going through a volatile time despite the narrative that memory is no longer a cyclical market. Another notable name, Micron Technology (MU), also dropped over the past three months.
This reflects concerns about future artificial intelligence (AI)-related memory demand, brought to the forefront by DeepSeek’s latest V4.1-Flash AI model, which has lower memory requirements. However, memory prices are still rising. According to a TrendForce pricing survey, NAND flash demand is expected to remain largely driven by AI inference workloads and the continued build-out of large-scale data centers. In the third quarter, NAND Flash contract prices are projected to increase by 10%-15% quarter-over-quarter. However, this pace is noticeably slower than in previous quarters.
