- Sandisk's stock fell 56% since June 21 peak due to intense competition.
- Kioxia challenges Sandisk with its NAND flash memory market presence.
- China's DUV lithography breakthrough pressures US and Dutch chipmakers.
Chipmakers, memory manufacturers, and semiconductors continued to bear the brunt of investors' selling streak on Wednesday. Sandisk Corp. seemed to have slipped deepest through the cracks.
The American memory giant has dived 56% from its June 21 peak of $2,354.39. Competition, specifically from its south-east Asian rivals like newly-listed SK Hynix, and to be listed Kioxia, seems to be putting pressure on the premier memory maker.
Kioxia poses a direct market share threat to Sandisk as it specialises in developing, manufacturing and supplying NAND flash memory devices.
More recently, China's breakthrough in mass producing deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, has put pressure on all the Wall Street chipmakers, including ADRs of Korean Giant SK Hynix.
The report triggered fresh concerns that China's progress in semiconductor equipment could gradually reduce its dependence on Dutch chip-equipment giant ASML Holding NV and US suppliers, potentially denting their long-term growth prospects despite years of export restrictions imposed by Washington.
Sandisk's stock has slumped over 36% in the last five days alone and 50% in the last 30 days. As of 10:45 a.m., the shares traded 8% lower at $1,008.39 on the Nasdaq Compsite index.
Other majors like Micron Technology was slid 5% to $784.20, AMD was down 5.45% to a low of $429.40, SK Hynix eased some of the strain and traded 1.24% lower at $127.50.
ASML Holding, the company which is expected to face the direct impact from China's news, traded 2.40% lower at $1,544.94.
AI-led tech giants like Nvidia Corp.'s demand for storage chips has also put memory makers like Sandisk and Samsung in a pickle as their data centres eat up a large chunk of their RAM, HBM, and SSD supply.
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Going ahead, these data centres are expected to consume more than 70% of the high-end memory chips manufacturers produce in 2026, according to TrendForce.
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