KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 8 (Bernama) -- Bursa Malaysia closed almost flat on Tuesday as buying interest rotated away from index heavyweights towards smaller-cap construction stocks, with sentiment affected by geopolitical uncertainty, said an analyst. At 5 pm, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) eased 0.39 of a point to 1,714.40 from Monday’s close of 1,714.79. The benchmark index opened 1.65 points lower at 1,713.14 and moved between 1,710.44 and 1,714.50 throughout the trading session. The broader market was almost evenly balanced, with decliners leading gainers 548 to 546, while 598 counters were unchanged, 1,107 were untraded and 25 were suspended. Turnover expanded to 4.13 billion units valued at RM3.14 billion from 3.60 billion units valued at RM2.45 billion on Monday.
Key Takeaways Supply tightness until 2026 : SanDisk expects the NAND flash market to remain undersupplied through at least 2026, driven by strong AI and cloud demand. Pricing power intact : Company raised prices by 10% across all channels in September, with more hikes possible. Next-gen upgrades : Rapid transition to BICS 8 NAND (40–50% output by year-end) and co-development of High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) with SK hynix. Industry-wide upcycle : Peers Micron (MU), Western Digital (WDC), and Seagate (STX) also benefit from AI-led storage demand. Market Tightness to Persist SanDisk CEO David Goeckeler said hyperscale data centers shifting from AI training to inference workloads are consuming NAND at record pace. With limited new capacity coming online, undersupply could extend well into 2026. Strong Pricing Momentum SanDisk raised 10% prices on new orders after Sept 5, citing broad-based demand from AI, cloud, and mobile. CFO ...