Citrine's View: Recent negative rumors about NAND have been excessively magnified, and SanDisk's low-price LTA is a strategic choice rather than a sign of weak demand, maintaining a bullish outlook on the storage sector

BlockBeats News, July 25th, Citrini analyst Jukan responded to the recent market rumors about NAND bearish notes and negative news regarding QLC price negotiations. When SanDisk signed a long-term agreement with Meta at a price lower than the initial quote, it was not surprising. SanDisk is the most proactive NAND manufacturer in pursuing LTAs, planning to allocate over 50% of its total shipment volume to such agreements. Based on this strategy, it is naturally willing to accept an LTA price lower than the current quarter's contract price. It cannot be inferred from this that "SanDisk is unable to seamlessly resell all orders to higher-bidding North American customers."

Regarding the rumor that Chinese module manufacturers were rejected when promoting eSSDs to domestic CSPs, Jukan explained that Chinese CSPs have a direct purchasing channel from Yangtze Memory rather than insufficient demand. As for the claim that oversupply of QLC eSSDs due to price pressure from hyperscale cloud providers has led to unsold inventory, it is believed that new cloud providers have enough demand to absorb this inventory.

Jukan concluded by stating that when storage stocks perform poorly, negative headlines are more likely to be exaggerated, but the fundamentals have not shown substantial deterioration. He reiterated his bullish view on storage. Previously, Jukan had stated that DRAM contract prices still have about a 40% upside potential until the end of 2027, and HBM supply remains tight. This clarification on the NAND side further solidifies his bullish stance on the entire storage sector.