Here's What $1,000 Spread Across These 4 Memory and Storage Stocks Could Be Worth by 2030

In July, SK Hynix (NASDAQ: SKHY) listed on the Nasdaq as the largest American depositary receipts (ADRs) offering in Wall Street history, raising roughly $26.5 billion. For the first time, all the companies that provide the memory for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers traded on one U.S. exchange.

That matters because AI has changed the demand equation for memory. Here is what $250 apiece in Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU), Sandisk (NASDAQ: SNDK), SK Hynix, and Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) might look like by 2030.

Image source: Getty Images.

Micron, the one with every layer covered

The reason Micron belongs in an AI portfolio is high-bandwidth memory (HMB), the stacked chips packaged right next to the graphics processing unit (GPU) inside data centers so data does not have to travel far. Micron has had its HBM4 in high-volume production since March, built specifically for Nvidia's (NASDAQ: NVDA) Vera Rubin platform, and it used a technology webinar on Oct. 21 to walk investors through what it calls a multigenerational roadmap meant to keep that lead for the next decade. What I like is that Micron also sells the slower, cheaper memory, so it gets paid at every layer of the stack. The risk with this company is one that every memory investor already knows in their gut. This industry is cyclical, and Micron's shares lost roughly half their value in the 2022 downturn. It can happen again.

Sandisk, trying to make flash less cyclical

Sandisk makes NAND flash and the solid state drives (SSD) that AI servers use to hold what engineers call the KV cache, which is essentially the model's short-term memory of a long conversation so it does not have to recompute everything. The interesting thing Sandisk is doing has less to do with chips and more to do with contracts. At its August investor day, the company said eight customers have signed multiyear agreements with committed volumes and minimum financial guarantees. That is an attempt to take the boom-and-bust out of a business that has always been boom-and-bust.

SK Hynix, the HBM leader you can finally buy

SK Hynix is the South Korean company Nvidia has leaned on longest for high-bandwidth memory. It signed a multi-year technology partnership with the chipmaker in June and shipped samples of its 12-layer HBM4E, the next generation, that same month. And here is the part that surprised me. It trades at a single-digit multiple of trailing earnings, which makes it the cheapest of the four by a wide margin. The risks are specific here too. This is a new ADR with very little trading history; there are Korean governance and tax wrinkles for U.S. holders to think about; and the company runs an NAND plant in Dalian, China, that is subject to export rules.

Western Digital, because the hard drive refuses to die

Western Digital builds the hard drives that hold the cold data AI keeps generating, the stuff that needs to be reachable in seconds but does not need to be fast. Chief Executive Officer Irving Tan told investors in January that the company is "pretty much sold out" for calendar 2026, with firm purchase orders from its top seven customers and long-term agreements already signed with two of them for 2027 and one for 2028. On the technology side, Western Digital's roadmap targets 100 terabytes for hard drives by 2029.

The $1,000 math

This is my own scenario, and I kept it modest, because the one thing memory investors probably should never do is extrapolate an up cycle four years out. I gave SK Hynix 20% per year for being the HBM leader with the group's cheapest valuation. Micron gets 18% for having the most complete AI memory lineup. Sandisk and Western Digital get 15% each, since both have signed multiyear supply deals that should smooth the ride without necessarily speeding it up.

Run those numbers for four years, and the $250 in SK Hynix grows to about $518, the Micron slice to roughly $485, and the Sandisk and Western Digital pieces to about $437 apiece. Put it all together, and you are looking at close to $1,880 from the original $1,000. If all four just match the market's long-run 10% average return instead, you end up at roughly $1,460.

Micah Zimmerman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Micron Technology, Nvidia, and Western Digital. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.