I've been following SNDK for over a year and have also visited the headquarters and spoken with various board members. Initially the company, located in Sunnyvale, was called Sun Disk, but then someone must have gotten the bright idea that SanDisk (in reference to the French word "san" which means "without", would be more appropriate.
Anyone would be crazy to buy shares without looking into financials, patents, etc. In this case, one of the interesting things is that most of the flash memory patents (the older, key patents, that is) were issued to somebody named Eli Harari, who just happens to be the CEO of SanDisk. When I originally recommended the shares to some of my investment clients, the company was focused mainly on flash memory for digital cameras. But in the past year, this MultiMedia Card for MP3 music players had taken hold, not just for MP3 but for cell phones, palm computers, and possibly even appliances that need memory storage. The multimedia card may become more important than the original compact flash memory. Anyway, it's hard to predict earnings, but not hard to project increase in demand for memory units - about 200 to 300 percent a year for the next three or four years would be a fairly conservative estimate.
Just in case you're in doubt, you might check into SONY, which has decided to produce what they call a "memory stick." It looks a little different from a flash memory, but uses some of the SNDK patents. When SONY cranks up sales of memory sticks for its combination cam corders and still cameras, you're looking at a market of millions of units a year. Sony doesn't have the capacity to make all its memory sticks, and if it doesn't want help from SanDisk, then Sony's competitors, like Matsushita will be glad to get a few units from SNDK.
Finally, there is a patent lawsuit that looks like it will be settled in SanDisk's favor. Pretty soon we'll long for the stock to get back to 40, much less its present 35. |
