The $863.9 million fourth quarter revenue of flash memory card maker SanDisk Corp, though plunged 31 percent from the previous year, exceeded the Wall Street expectations of $766.8 million.

SanDisk's quarterly loss figures of $1.86 billion were largely due to pretax goodwill and intangible asset impairment charges of $1.02 billion, resulting from a fall in the company's market capitalization.

Among other charges were $464 million valuation allowance; $388 million charges to cost of sales; $184 million inventory related charges; $121 million idle capacity costs; and $31 million restructuring and other charges.

Expressing disappointment over the Milpitas, California-based company's fourth quarter bottom line results, CEO Eli Harari said the company is "focused on managing its business through the difficult global economic climate and limited visibility in 2009. We are taking significant steps to curtail our captive output, conserve cash, and reduce capital and operating expenditures."

Along with posting the quarterly results on Monday, SanDisk also announced its intentions of reining costs and conserving cash, in order to cope with "macroeconomic turmoil" and a hard pricing milieu.

As per opinion of technical analyst Vijay Rakesh, of ThinkEquity, the investors appear all-praise for the company's top-line performance and have expressed confidence in SanDisk's prospects in the months to come.

Rakesh said: "People are starting to look ahead," and added about SanDisk that it has "cleared out inventory, and you're seeing a nice price elasticity!"