SanDisk, the storage chip maker, has been upgraded from hold to buy by Argus Research analyst Jim Kelleher after its share price fell about 47% from the record $2,335 high reached on June 25. Kelleher assigned a 12-month target price of $1,600 and said the decline had opened a more attractive entry point after his team began coverage in July while waiting for a better buying opportunity. The stock came under pressure after the company reported quarterly results last week and issued future earnings guidance (management forecasts for upcoming performance) that fell short of market expectations, triggering a 6.8% one-day drop followed by a further 3.7% decline. Even so, Kelleher said SanDisk remains in the early stage of a multi-year cycle of faster revenue growth and margin expansion, driven by rising storage demand from AI data centers (facilities that power large-scale AI computing). He said large cloud computing (renting computing power and data services) companies including Amazon, Meta and Google parent Alphabet are continuing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure, widening the supply-demand gap for storage components. SanDisk shares are still up about 422% this year and 2,757% over the past 12 months, and the recent pullback has not altered the view that the AI infrastructure spending cycle may provide a new growth engine.