Sandisk Corp. (NASDAQ:SNDK) had a rough Friday. The stock fell about 10% as a broader technology sell-off hit high-growth names, with the Nasdaq Composite down 2.85% and the S&P 500 off 1.41%. Not exactly the backdrop you want when you're trying to tell a growth story.

But the growth story is still there, at least according to Rosenblatt analyst Kevin Cassidy. He kept his Buy rating and his $2,400 price forecast, which is based on 10 times his fiscal 2028 non-GAAP earnings-per-share estimate. The sell-off, in other words, looks like a market problem rather than a Sandisk problem.

And the numbers behind that view are, to put it mildly, not subtle. Sandisk's fiscal first-quarter revenue surged 378% year over year and 23% sequentially to $11.03 billion. That topped Cassidy's $10.55 billion estimate and the $10.72 billion consensus. Adjusted earnings came in at $49.51 per share, ahead of his $45.80 estimate and the $46.67 consensus.

Data Centers Are Doing the Heavy Lifting

The engine behind all of that is data center demand. Data center revenue jumped 1,682% year over year and 61% sequentially to $4.80 billion, making it the primary growth driver for the memory maker. Sandisk also posted a non-GAAP gross margin of 85.1% and adjusted free cash flow of $5.7 billion.

Those are the kind of margins that make you double-check the spreadsheet. They also explain why Cassidy isn't sweating a single bad trading session.

Contracts, Contracts, Contracts

What really seems to have Cassidy excited is Sandisk's New Business Model agreements, which he says are performing better than expected. The company has locked in deals with eight customers covering about 50% of fiscal 2027 bit production and roughly two-thirds of fiscal 2028 production. Those contracts represent $93.9 billion in minimum committed revenue.

That's a lot of revenue that's already spoken for. And the pipeline of potential new agreements exceeds Sandisk's available supply through the end of the decade, which is a fancy way of saying there's more demand than the company can physically serve. Cassidy expects contracted coverage to keep rising as Sandisk signs new customers and extends existing deals.

He also noted that 95% of existing agreements are with investment-grade customers, which adds some serious credibility to the long-term revenue visibility story. These aren't fly-by-night buyers; they're the kind of customers who pay their bills.

AI Inference Is the Next Frontier

Cassidy flagged AI inference as another significant growth opportunity. He expects growing adoption of triple-level cell (TLC) and quad-level cell (QLC) enterprise solid-state drives, along with key-value (KV) cache tiering, to expand NAND flash storage demand in data centers.

Sandisk itself expects KV cache to account for roughly one-third of the AI data center flash market by the end of the decade. Cassidy also highlighted the company's BiCS technology roadmap and emerging high-bandwidth flash (HBF) technology, with initial HBF samples expected in 2027.

In plain English: AI models need somewhere to stash all that data, and Sandisk wants to be the one selling them the shelves.

Numbers Go Up

Cassidy raised his fiscal second-quarter revenue estimate to $12.40 billion from $12.20 billion and his adjusted EPS estimate to $56.90 from $52.98. For fiscal 2027, he bumped revenue to $49.48 billion from $48.80 billion and adjusted EPS to $221.28 from $210. For fiscal 2028, he kept his $60 billion revenue estimate but raised adjusted EPS to $247.71 from $240.

Sandisk's own guidance for the fiscal second quarter calls for revenue of $12.2 billion to $12.6 billion and adjusted EPS of $55 to $57, both above Cassidy's previous estimates. The company also expects data center NAND bit demand to grow about 40% in 2027, though it plans to keep bit production growth disciplined in the mid-to-high teens rather than aggressively expanding capacity.

That discipline is probably why pricing has held up so well. Scarcity, it turns out, is good for business.

SNDK Price Action: Sandisk shares were down 10.21% at $1,194.29 at the time of publication Friday, according to market data.