RBC Capital Raises Earnings Estimates in SanDisk (SNDK)

Early on Friday, analysts at RBC Capital boosted the near-term estimates on SanDisk Corporation (SNDK), a manufacturer of data storage products, because a fire at SK Hynix’s factory should lead to favorable pricing over the next two quarters.

“We see a favorable pricing environment as a result of SK Hynix’s fire, which threatens to curtail NAND output as the company likely re-purposes production back toward DRAM, resulting in lower than expected incremental NAND wafers vs. company’s plan of 170K/WPM,” RBC Capital analyst Freedman said. “Consequently, we see stronger pricing through EoY before SK Hynix ramps NAND toward normalized prod’t levels as DRAM resources are restored/replaced.”

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The analysts maintain an “Outperform” rating on SDNK and still see shares reaching $76. This price target suggests a 26% upside to the stock’s Thursday closing price of $60.08. Furthermore, they boosted SanDisk’s 2013 EPS estimates from $4.82 to $4.95.

SanDisk shares were up a fraction during pre-market trading on Friday. The stock is up 38.11% year-to-date.