SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) is the global leader in Flash Memory Storage technology, and is one of the most preferred brands in NAND chips for mobile devices (SD cards). SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK)’s stock has risen over 10% during 2013 so far, primarily on the encouraging results it posted for Q4 2012.
The stock’s ascent is justified due to the growth SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) posted in the solid-state drive (SSD) division, which makes up approximately 15% of the firm’s business. Its quarterly revenues from SSD shipments grew a massive 95% year-over-year, and its gross cash and marketable securities rose to $5.7 billion, up 5.4% on a sequential basis.
SSDs: New growth catalyst
It’s well-known that SSDs are taking over regular hard disk drives (HDD). Primarily, datacenters are fueling the initial SSD adoption despite the high cost/GB associated with SSDs, as they are required to setup less number of servers for their data intensive service. However, SSD prices have declined significantly over the last six months, down from $0.9/GB to $0.47/GB.
Although SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) isn’t a big player in the SSD game, the company’s SSD sales made up approximately 10% of its total revenue in 2012. Revenues more than doubled to $458 million in 2012, from approximately $198 million in 2011. Moreover, management forecasts that SSDs will make up approximately 25% of the company’s total revenue by 2014. The company supplies SSDs to 10 leading PC OEMs, which should help it gain market share.
Cloud storage to positively impact SSD sales
With cloud storage slowly becoming the primary mode of storage for enterprise customers, the need for storage will shift from local servers to cloud servers operated by datacenters. And as I stated above, with datacenters fueling SSD growth, the affordability of SSDs in terms of higher cost will no longer be a problem, since datacenters offer storage services for a price.
SanDisk vs. peers
SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) will face steep competition from Seagate Technology PLC (NASDAQ:STX), which has been manufacturing SSDs and hybrid drives (Hard Disk + on-board NAND Flash). Seagate’s CEO Steve Luczo said that by 2017, over 85% of Seagate Technology PLC (NASDAQ:STX)’s storage products will be hybrid drives, covering both consumer and enterprise segments.
Seagate Technology PLC (NASDAQ:STX) is now producing its third generation 2.5-inch Momentus XT hybrid drive. A hybrid 5mm drive would be a very good fit to Ultrabook and tablet needs, offering near-SSD speed and 500GB or more capacity at substantially less than SSD prices. Enterprise hybrids are also coming before the end of the current quarter. Such drives would provide twice as many IOPS as straight spinners. Luczo said hybrid drive discussions with customers have involved exclusivity questions, implying neither Toshiba nor WD might be involved as second sources.
Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ:WDC) is also an emerging player in the SSD industry. The company unveiled its new hybrid solid state technology known as SSHD at the CES this year. The new tech features the speed of a decent SSD, but has a capacity that a mechanical HDD would feature. On WD’s hybrid SSHD, the incoming writes from the host system aren’t stored on the NAND, with the caching system being controlled by the firmware and host-based software drivers.
