Citron Shorts $SNDK—They Won't Ring the Bell at the Peak
We don't need Anthropic to announce they're producing NAND flash memory. Samsung is already an industry giant, and they've been in this space for 30 years.
While TV commentators were banging their fists on the table and shoving retail investors into trucks, long-term investor Western Digital sold off a significant portion of its holdings days earlier, with a 25% drop.
Think about why. Because they know the cycle is about to peak, and they won't sit idly by and wait for the bell to ring.
The market is pricing SanDisk like it is priced for $NVDA. But the problem is: Nvidia has a moat. SanDisk is selling a commodity.
We've seen similar situations in 2008, 2012, and 2018. This time won't be any different. Memory is a cycle, and cycles eventually peak.
Samsung has chosen market share over profit margins for 30 years. They were waiting for pure SSD companies like SanDisk to settle for 50% gross margins before making their move. But this time, things are worse. All investors bullish on $SNDK should read this: Samsung just announced they won't sell any products with gross margins below 50% and are pushing their best chips into the high-end SSD market that SanDisk relies on. They're no longer just a capacity giant. They're stealing SanDisk's premium customers with cheaper, newer technology. And what's the only reason for the current supply shortage? Temporary yield issues on another Samsung product line.
This bottleneck will eventually pass.
With production capacity already double that of 2018 peaks, this so-called "shortage" is nothing but a supply mirage, likely to vanish in a single earnings call.
To put it another way: shorting $SNDK is like skating towards the finish line of a hockey game. When the market cycle returns to normal, the stock price will fall even lower.