Citrini Analyst Reiterates Bullish Outlook on the Storage Sector Amid NAND Price Concerns

Huoxing Finance reports that on July 25, Citrini analyst Jukan responded to recent bearish market rumors regarding NAND and negative news about QLC pricing negotiations. It is not surprising that SanDisk accepted a price lower than its initial quote when signing a long-term agreement with Meta; SanDisk is the most aggressive NAND manufacturer in pursuing LTAs, planning to allocate over 50% of its total shipments to such agreements. Naturally, this strategy leads it to accept LTA prices below current quarterly contract rates, but this cannot be used to infer that “SanDisk cannot seamlessly resell all its orders to North American customers offering higher prices.” Regarding rumors that Chinese module manufacturers were rejected by domestic CSPs when promoting eSSDs, Jukan explained that Chinese CSPs have direct procurement channels with YMTC rather than facing insufficient demand. As for claims that hyperscale cloud providers’ price pressures on QLC eSSDs have led to unsold inventory, Jukan believes new cloud providers have sufficient demand to absorb this volume. Jukan concluded that negative headlines tend to be amplified when storage stocks underperform, but the underlying fundamentals have not materially deteriorated. He reiterates his “bullish stance on storage.” Previously, Jukan stated that DRAM contract prices still have approximately 40% upside potential through the end of 2027 and that HBM supply remains tight; this clarification on the NAND side further reinforces his overall bullish position on the entire storage sector.