Sandisk‘s stock popped 14% after the company crushed Wall Street’s fiscal second-quarter estimates, as the artificial intelligence boom sent demand for its chips skyrocketing.
The flash storage memory company reported earnings of $6.20 per share, excluding items, blowing past the $3.62 per share expected by analysts surveyed by FactSet. Revenue totaled $3.03 billion, topping a forecast of $2.69 billion.
Sandisk’s third-quarter forecast also outpaced expectations for analysts.
Sandisk guided for between $4.4 billion and $4.8 billion in revenue for the quarter. That blew away the $2.93 billion expected by FactSet.
Memory companies like Sandisk are seeing a boost from skyrocketing memory need, as businesses race to funnel more storage supply into the power-hungry datacenter buildout that’s fueling the AI revolution.
The company’s datacenter business grew 64%, sequentially.
This backdrop has also created a supply and demand imbalance that’s allowed memory companies to hike prices and maintain strong margins.
Sandisk said it expects third-quarter gross margins to range between 65% and 67%, far ahead of the 49.3% expected by analysts polled by StreetAccount.
The memory shortage has hit multiple areas of the tech sector, and Apple reported supply issues of its own when it reported first-quarter earnings on Thursday.
CEO Tim Cook said advance node manufacturing was keeping it from making more iPhones, but the company would be hit by rising memory prices.
Cook said Apple was looking at “a range of options to deal with that.”
