{"id":626465,"date":"2026-01-26T11:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T09:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=626465"},"modified":"2026-01-26T11:01:52","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T09:01:52","slug":"one-tech-company-turned-r1000-into-r10142-in-6-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/626465-one-tech-company-turned-r1000-into-r10142-in-6-months.html","title":{"rendered":"One tech company turned R1,000 into R10,142 in 6 months"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Driven by a surge in flash memory demand, SanDisk\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 23 July 2025, SanDisk\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the six months since, SanDisk\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SanDisk\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The increases are due to a supply shortage caused by a swell in demand from artificial intelligence (AI) companies for high-end cloud servers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prominent computer storage company Western Digital acquired SanDisk for $19 billion in May 2016. It spun off its flash-memory business in February 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shares of the re-listed SanDisk have since climbed about 1,200%. SanDisk shares have surged about 105% so far this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has far outpaced the S&P 500 Index\u2019s gain of about 0.8% and led the index\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this month, SanDisk jumped after Nvidia chief Jensen Huang highlighted the growing need for memory at the CES technology conference, calling storage a \u201ccompletely unserved market.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sandisk short-sellers face extreme squeeze risk with $3 billion loss<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cextreme\u201d level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShort sellers have moved in lockstep over the last few months, utilising a reversal strategy by shorting aggressively into the rally,\u201d the firm\u2019s research team wrote in a note.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since early November, short interest \u2014 a metric that shows the proportion of available shares that have been borrowed and sold by bearish traders \u2014 has risen to 7.5% of the float from about 4%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, S3\u2019s short-squeeze risk score has climbed to 82.5. Mark-to-market losses on short positions have reached roughly $3 billion (R49.3 billion).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A short squeeze occurs when a rapid rise in a stock\u2019s price forces short sellers to buy back borrowed shares to close their positions, often at a loss, which can drive the price even higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa feeling the pain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re witnessing isn\u2019t just a temporary spike; it\u2019s a structural transformation driven by the explosive growth of AI infrastructure,\u201d Nowitz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGlobal hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are building out AI data centres at breakneck speed, and manufacturers are prioritising these high-margin enterprise clients.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowitz said this has led to significant shortages and price hikes, with some consumer SSDs up 50% and DDR5 kits doubling in price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOver the past year, demand for server-grade Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM) and high-bandwidth memory has skyrocketed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NAND flash market, which includes SanDisk\u2019s solid-state drives, is following a similar trajectory. Samsung and other major suppliers have raised prices on server SSDs by up to 35%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Driven by a surge in flash memory demand, the company’s share price has skyrocketed by over 1,000% in the past six months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":626467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92837,15,80335],"tags":[102231,76672,3838,10132,47428],"class_list":["post-626465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-hardware","category-investing","tag-craig-nowitz","tag-jensen-huang","tag-nvidia","tag-sandisk","tag-syntech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626465"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":626475,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626465\/revisions\/626475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}