Shares of Sandisk rose after Samsung reported it may buy Sandisk. Sandisk's specialty in flash memory could be used in many of Samsung's major products like digital cameras, mobile phones, other consumer electronics.
Sandisk's Q2 earnings showed that on-hand inventory increased 15%. Decreasing demand from a slowing US economy coupled with increasing supply is forcing Sandisk to slash prices in an effort to get rid of inventory. Losses to Sandisk are making the company delay production on a new fab and possibly canceling production on another planned fab construction.
Memory suppliers are being hit hard by an oversupply in the memory market which has driven prices to record lows. DRAM prices are down 43% and NAND prices are down 61% since June 2007, and the economic slowdown in the US is only aggravating the problem. Semiconductor sales in June were up only .5% y-o-y, but when memory is excluded from that calculation, all other semiconductor sales were up 12%.
Applied Materials CEO, Michael Splinter, reported that the company's wafer fab capital expenditures would be down about 50% in DRAM and 15% in flash memory for the year. This bodes well for Sandisk as it could help the oversupply of memory in the market. However, Sandisk shares have fallen as some analysts have downgraded the stock after suspecting that price competition may be worse than expected.
Shares of memory chip maker SanDisk Corp. moved higher Monday after an analyst said its chips are likely to rise in value as electronics maker Samsung "aggressively" seeks new supplies.
Samsung's increased prices are a further sign that supply is tightening in the second quarter and it is seen as a positive development for NAND chip maker, SanDisk Corp.
SanDisk Corp. said Thursday that it swung to a first-quarter profit as sales rose 8%, but the company hinted that gross margins for various products could come under pressure in the second quarter.
SanDisk (SNDK) reported earnings of $18 million, or 8 cents a share, compared with a loss of $575,000 or break-even on a per-share basis in the same period a year ago. Revenue rose 8% to $850 million from last year's $786 million.
For its second quarter, Milpitas, Calif.-based SanDisk estimates its revenue will be between $875 million and $950 million. Analysts that follow SanDisk have forecast the company to post sales of $905 million.
In after-hours trading, SanDisk shares rose 5% to $27.20 after shedding 80 cents in the regular session.
SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), the world's largest supplier of flash storage card products, today announced results for the first quarter ended March 30, 2008. Total first-quarter revenue increased 8% on a year-over-year basis to $850 million and net income, in accordance with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) was $18 million, or $0.08 per diluted share, compared to a GAAP net loss of $0.6 million, or $0.00 per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2007.
Excluding the impact of acquisition-related charges, share-based compensation expense and the related tax effect, first quarter non-GAAP net income increased to $48 million, or $0.21 per diluted share, compared to first quarter 2007 non-GAAP net income of $45 million, or $0.19 per diluted share.
SanDisk has announced that it has doubled the capacity of its CompactFlash 5000 flash memory cards for industrial markets. The cards provide a high level of durability as well as high read and write speeds, and the extra capacity makes it a more suitable accessory for mission-critical applications including medical instruments, military applications and gaming systems.
SanDisk executives revealed detailed capital expenditure plans through 2010 at the company’s annual financial analysts day, held on February 26th. SanDisk is the joint manufacturing partner of Toshiba for NAND flash memory. Despite an ASP decline of 60 percent in each of the last two years, SanDisk is projecting its own share of the capital equipment burden to increase sequentially, reaching a peak of $3 billion in 2009.
Judy Bruner, SanDisk’s CFO, noted that capital spending in 2007 actually exceeded original projections due to the improved capacity capability of its mainstream 300mm facility with Toshiba, Fab 3. SanDisk spent $1.857 billion in 2007 compared to the $1.375 billion projection at the beginning of last year.
Capital equipment spending will also rise in 2008 to $2.4 billion as it upgrades Fab 3 to fabricate finer geometries after reaching an upwardly revised capacity of 150,000wspm at the end of 2007. However, the bulk ($1.65 billion) will be allocated to the ramp of Fab 4, which started volume production in Q407. SanDisk expects Fab 4 to reach 110,000wspm by the end of 2008 - approximately 50 percent of its total wafer capacity.
Reaching a new threshold in the development of flash memory, SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) today announced that it expects to start mass production of the world’s first commercial three-bit-per-cell (x3) NAND flash memory in March/April 2008. The 16-gigabit (Gb) x3 NAND flash employs SanDisk’s standard 56 nanometer (nm) flash technology and provides over 20 percent more die per wafer compared to standard NAND Multi-Level Cell (MLC) memory (2-bits-per-cell) on the same technology node. x3 enables higher manufacturing efficiency and lower die cost for the same capital investment. The new x3 flash architecture has been in development for the past two years and employs SanDisk’s most advanced patented design innovations to achieve the same performance and high reliability found in SanDisk’s 2-bits-per-cell chips.
SanDisk (NSDQ: SNDK) on Wednesday introduced a USB flash drive with automatic online backup, so files can be recovered from any Internet-connected computer if the drive is lost, forgotten or stolen.
The Cruzer Titanium Plus is SanDisk's first USB drive with backup capabilities. The 4Gbyte device will be featured at the International Consumer Electronics Show Jan. 7-10 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
SanDisk 2GB SD Card is edging out Apple in the traditionally frenetic Christmas week shopping on Amazon.co.uk’s Electronics & Computing section.
Apple's move could presage the end of hard drives, and a huge opportunity for the flash memory made by SanDisk, which could replace hard drives in computers everywhere.
Meeting the requirements of the latest types of mobile phones with card slots, the 8GB SanDisk microSDHC and M2 cards are perfect for the burgeoning number of individuals who try to flaunt their mobile phones with their digital camera, built-in music player, and video player and recorder, as something special to their existence.
SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), a leading developer of portable audio/video players, today announced the public BETA version of Fanfare™, a dynamic Web-based service that enables consumers to download television shows, movies and other premium video content to portable devices. The BETA of the Fanfare content delivery service platform coincides with the U.S. online retail availability of the new Sansa® TakeTV™ PC-to-TV video player (formerly “USBTV”). The combination of Fanfare with Sansa TakeTV creates an exceptional, end-to-end entertainment system enabling viewers to time-shift and place-shift their favorite shows by downloading them from their PC to watch them on nearly any TV, at any time.
SanDisk reported an 18 percent fall in Q3 profit as the company has been spending more on factories. The net income for the quarter was $84.6 million, compared to $103.3 million last year. However, the sales increased 38 percent to $1.04 billion. The decrease in the net income was mainly due to an increase in the operating expense, which included factory costs. The average price of SanDisk’s memory fell 16 percent from the previous quarter.
SanDisk's earnings take a hit because of continuing decline in the average selling price of NAND flash memory chips
iPhone mania helped buoy SanDisk's stock--even though Apple is not a customer. Such is the effect that Apple's flash-based products have on the worldwide market for NAND (ever heard of the iPod?).
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