One tech company turned R1,000 into R10,142 in 6 months
Driven by a surge in flash memory demand, SanDisk’s share price has skyrocketed over the last six months. Investors who put down R1,000 in July 2025 are now sitting on a R10,000 windfall.
On 23 July 2025, SanDisk’s stock was trading at $43 when the Nasdaq closed and the dollar-rand exchange rate was R17.51. R1,000 would have bought just less than 1.33 SanDisk shares.
In the six months since, SanDisk’s share price has skyrocketed past $500. As of market close on Friday, 23 January 2026, the stock has pulled back to $473.83, with the rand worth R16.12 to the dollar.
SanDisk’s share price has grown by over 1,000% in the past six months. Factoring in the rand strengthening 8% against the U.S. dollar, a R1,000 investment is now worth R10,142.
Prices on memory and solid state storage have surged globally, with some consumer products selling for double or more in South Africa than they were two months ago.
The increases are due to a supply shortage caused by a swell in demand from artificial intelligence (AI) companies for high-end cloud servers.
Prominent computer storage company Western Digital acquired SanDisk for $19 billion in May 2016. It spun off its flash-memory business in February 2025.
Shares of the re-listed SanDisk have since climbed about 1,200%. SanDisk shares have surged about 105% so far this year.
It has far outpaced the S&P 500 Index’s gain of about 0.8% and led the index’s top performers in 2026. It was set for a sixth consecutive weekly gain, but the share slipped as much as 4.7% in Friday morning trading.
S3 Partners said the rally comes as the artificial-intelligence trade rotates toward storage stocks and as global flash memory shortages allow the company to raise prices.
Earlier this month, SanDisk jumped after Nvidia chief Jensen Huang highlighted the growing need for memory at the CES technology conference, calling storage a “completely unserved market.”
Sandisk short-sellers face extreme squeeze risk with $3 billion loss
S3 Partners has also noted that short interest in SanDisk has been climbing for months alongside a sharp rally in the stock, pushing the risk of a short squeeze to an “extreme” level.
“Short sellers have moved in lockstep over the last few months, utilising a reversal strategy by shorting aggressively into the rally,” the firm’s research team wrote in a note.
Since early November, short interest — a metric that shows the proportion of available shares that have been borrowed and sold by bearish traders — has risen to 7.5% of the float from about 4%.
Meanwhile, S3’s short-squeeze risk score has climbed to 82.5. Mark-to-market losses on short positions have reached roughly $3 billion (R49.3 billion).
A short squeeze occurs when a rapid rise in a stock’s price forces short sellers to buy back borrowed shares to close their positions, often at a loss, which can drive the price even higher.
South Africa feeling the pain
Craig Nowitz, the CEO of IT distributor Syntech, recently told MyBroadband that the unprecedented global surges in memory and solid-state drives (SSD) prices are being acutely felt in South Africa.
“What we’re witnessing isn’t just a temporary spike; it’s a structural transformation driven by the explosive growth of AI infrastructure,” Nowitz said.
“Global hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are building out AI data centres at breakneck speed, and manufacturers are prioritising these high-margin enterprise clients.”
Nowitz said this has led to significant shortages and price hikes, with some consumer SSDs up 50% and DDR5 kits doubling in price.
He warned that this trend is projected to continue, stating that as the CEO of an IT distributor, he has had a front-row seat to one of the most dramatic shifts in the tech supply chain in recent years.
“Over the past year, demand for server-grade Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM) and high-bandwidth memory has skyrocketed,” he said.
“As a result, consumer-grade DDR4 and DDR5 modules, the bread and butter of our retail and integrator channels, are becoming harder to source and significantly more expensive.”
The NAND flash market, which includes SanDisk’s solid-state drives, is following a similar trajectory. Samsung and other major suppliers have raised prices on server SSDs by up to 35%.
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