Western Digital Corporation (WDC)
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symbol.quality_heading
The business works in principle, but one material question is open. As long as it stays open, our findings do not carry a quality verdict.
A repaired balance sheet ($1.6 billion in debt against $2.05 billion in cash), 50.2 percent gross margin, roughly a billion dollars of free cash flow per quarter, and a dividend raised 20 percent support holding — the hyperscaler concentration and the cyclical history are a pricing risk against this balance sheet, not a survival risk. What blocks a new purchase, after a nearly tenfold run in twelve months, is the price alone: a price-to-sales ratio around 21.6 already assumes record margins persist — not an entry point at the current price. The next reality check is the full-year results with the fiscal year 2027 outlook (late July 2026) and the hyperscalers' ordering patterns. The decision is yours.
symbol.quality_note
Western Digital is now a pure-play hard-drive maker after the Sandisk spin-off — and one of the biggest winners of the AI data-center boom: revenue +45 percent, gross margin above 50 percent for the first time, debt cut from $4.75 billion to $1.6 billion. We read the annual report (10-K) and the quarterly reports (10-Q): of the $6.2 billion earned in the last nine months, $4.45 billion comes from the markup on the retained Sandisk stake, three customers supply 43 percent of revenue — and this same business was posting losses just two years ago. Not investment advice — just the reminder that even the best cycle of all time is still a cycle.
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Stock Watch
This analysis is as of July 15, 2026. Stock Watch will tell you what's changed at WDC since then.
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Trading Day
Key levels of the most recently completed trading day — not a live quote.
52-Week Range
Current price 544.80 $ — 70% of the range above the low.
Lowest and highest closing price over the last 52 weeks. The marker shows where the current price sits within that range: close to the high speaks for strength, close to the low for weakness.
Basics
Performance
Technical Indicators
Calculated from the price history · as of 08/03/2026
Valuation
Profitability
Balance Sheet & Safety
Growth
Dividend
Quality & Screener
AI Rating
Uses AIWestern Digital erzielt keine KI-Umsätze — die Festplatten (HDD) sind generische Massenspeicher, und KI erscheint in Geschäfts- und Quartalsberichten (10-K/10-Q) durchgängig nur als externer Nachfrage-Treiber für Cloud-Rechenzentren —, aber der Geschäftsbericht (10-K) 2025 belegt den eigenen operativen Einsatz von KI-Technologien für Geschäftszwecke (inklusive Prompt-Injection-Risiken der eingesetzten Systeme), daher „Nutzt KI".
View the full file — quotes, sources, reviewed filings
„Separately, the AI technologies that we employ for business purposes may be vulnerable to prompt-injection or other adversarial attacks, which could result in unauthorized access to or leakage of sensitive information."
Darüber hinaus können die KI-Technologien, die wir für Geschäftszwecke einsetzen, anfällig für Prompt-Injection- oder andere feindliche Angriffe sein, was zu unbefugtem Zugriff auf sensible Informationen oder deren Abfluss führen könnte.
„Our use of AI technology may create new privacy and security risks, especially where personal data is involved."
Unser Einsatz von KI-Technologie kann neue Datenschutz- und Sicherheitsrisiken schaffen, insbesondere wenn personenbezogene Daten betroffen sind.
„The adoption of artificial intelligence (“AI”) and workloads driven by hybrid data is driving additional growth in data storage as well."
Auch die Einführung künstlicher Intelligenz („KI") und durch hybride Daten getriebene Arbeitslasten sorgen für zusätzliches Wachstum bei der Datenspeicherung.
„As global data creation continues to accelerate, particularly in the age of AI, and as the need to store and retain data also grows, we believe HDDs will continue to remain the preferred technology for storing large volumes of data as the most economical solution to the large cloud data centers for their mass storage needs."
Da die weltweite Datenerzeugung weiter beschleunigt — besonders im KI-Zeitalter — und der Bedarf, Daten zu speichern und aufzubewahren, ebenfalls wächst, sind wir überzeugt, dass Festplatten die bevorzugte Technologie zum Speichern großer Datenmengen bleiben werden: als wirtschaftlichste Lösung für die großen Cloud-Rechenzentren und deren Massenspeicher-Bedarf.
Filings Reviewed: 10-Q 2026-05-01 · 10-Q 2026-01-30 · 10-Q 2025-10-31 · 10-Q 2025-05-02 · 10-K 2025-08-14 · 10-K 2024-08-20
Rated on July 10, 2026 · How the Rating Is Built
Highlighted are things our editorial team noticed: green = stands out as strong, red = deserves a closer look. No single metric is a verdict on its own — always read it in context.
Analysts & Price Target
The price target sits 20.3% above the current price.
- Consensus
- Sell
- Analyst Ratings
- 25
Combined picture of the price targets and recommendations of every analyst covering the stock. Price targets are expectations for the next 12 months, not promises — and they often follow the price rather than predict it.
Estimates by Fiscal Year
| Fiscal Year | EPS Estimate ($) | EPS Range ($) | Revenue Estimate ($M) | Expected Growth | Analysts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 06/30/2027 | 18.75 | 14.98 – 22.40 | 18,248 | 88.3% | 20 |
Average of the analyst estimates for the coming fiscal years. The range shows how far the most optimistic and the most cautious estimate sit apart — the wider it is, the less certain the expectation.
Next Reporting Date
- Expected Earnings per Share
- 3.24 $
Expected date of the next quarterly or annual figures. Dates do shift occasionally — only the invitation issued by the company is binding.
Revenue & Profit
Cash Flow
Balance Sheet
Margins
Per Share
Click the chart or tab into it, then use ← and → to step through the periods.
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· Total · per year
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The figures could not be loaded right now.
Source: fundamental data
Quarterly Figures
| Quarter | EPS (Earnings Per Share) | EPS YoY (%) | Sales ($M) | Sales YoY (%) | Net Margin (%) | OCF ($M) | FCF ($M) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024: Q4 | 1.66 | – | 4,285 | 41.30 | 13.90 | 403 | 287 |
| 2025: Q1 | 1.46 | 286.10 | 2,294 | 30.90 | 22.80 | 508 | 379 |
| 2025: Q2 | 0.71 | 535.30 | 2,605 | 30.00 | 9.90 | 746 | 675 |
| 2025: Q3 | 3.14 | 127.60 | 2,818 | 27.40 | 41.90 | 672 | 599 |
| 2025: Q4 | 4.90 | 194.40 | 3,017 | -29.60 | 61.10 | 745 | 653 |
| 2026: Q1 | 8.52 | 482.40 | 3,337 | 45.50 | 96.00 | 1,123 | 978 |
- EPS (Earnings Per Share):
- Quarterly profit divided by the total share count — how much of the profit works out to a single share.
- YoY (Year over Year):
- Change versus the same quarter a year ago — this is how you compare without seasonal distortion (e.g. the holiday shopping season).
- Sales:
- All revenue for the quarter, before any costs are deducted — the top line of the income statement.
- Net Margin:
- What percentage of sales is left over as profit in the end. Negative means the company is posting a loss.
- OCF (Operating Cash Flow):
- The cash that actually flows into the till from the core business during the quarter — harder to dress up than book profit.
- FCF (Free Cash Flow):
- Operating cash flow minus capital expenditures — the money that's genuinely free to use, say for paying down debt, buybacks, or dividends.
Annual Figures
| Fiscal Year | Revenue ($M) | EBIT ($M) | Net Income ($M) | EPS ($) | Operating Cash Flow ($M) | Equity ($M) | Total Assets ($M) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 12,994 | 466 | 242 | 1.00 | 1,983 | 11,145 | 32,862 |
| 2017 | 19,093 | 1,954 | 397 | 1.34 | 3,437 | 11,418 | 29,860 |
| 2018 | 20,647 | 3,617 | 675 | 2.20 | 4,205 | 11,531 | 29,235 |
| 2019 | 16,569 | 87 | -754 | -2.58 | 1,547 | 9,967 | 26,370 |
| 2020 | 16,736 | 335 | -250 | -0.84 | 824 | 9,551 | 25,662 |
| 2021 | 16,922 | 1,220 | 821 | 2.66 | 1,898 | 10,721 | 26,132 |
| 2022 | 18,793 | 2,391 | 1,546 | 4.89 | 1,880 | 12,221 | 26,259 |
| 2023 | 6,255 | -548 | -1,684 | -5.30 | -408 | 10,964 | 24,546 |
| 2024 | 6,317 | -403 | -798 | -2.45 | -294 | 10,818 | 24,188 |
| 2025 | 9,520 | 2,334 | 1,861 | 5.18 | 1,691 | 5,311 | 14,002 |
Fiscal years from the audited annual reports, oldest first. EBIT is the operating profit before interest and taxes; total assets are everything the company owns.
Assessment: Opportunities & Risks
Revenue +45 percent, exabytes shipped +34 percent and price per exabyte +9 percent in the third quarter of fiscal year 2026; customers are committing earlier and for longer per the quarterly report (10-Q) — scarcity with pricing power in a three-supplier market.
Gross margin 50.2 percent (prior-year quarter: 39.8), operating margin 35.7 percent, $978 million of free cash flow in the quarter; guidance points to 51 to 52 percent adjusted gross margin for the final quarter of 2026.
Debt cut from $4.75 billion to $1.6 billion (mostly in exchange for Sandisk shares), $2.05 billion in cash, a $6 billion buyback program and a 20 percent dividend increase to $0.15 per quarter (June 2026).
The same hard-drive business lost a combined roughly $1.7 billion in fiscal years 2023 and 2024; the annual report (10-K) documents underutilization and falling prices as recently as 2024 — and even during the boom, $103 million in restructuring charges hit the books (9M FY 2026).
Cloud end market equals 89 percent of revenue, the top-10 customers 71 percent, three customers 43 percent (Q3 FY2026); this same hyperscaler buyer group collectively paused orders in 2023/2024 and triggered the loss years.
Price-to-sales around 21.6 and a reported P/E around 35 (data as of July 9, 2026), with 71 percent of the nine-month profit being a Sandisk paper gain (adjusted: $2.72 instead of $8.20 per share in Q3); the $37.72 convertible note keeps diluting, and insider filings (Form 4) show 19 sales versus 1 purchase.
Western Digital is the rare case where the boom story is fully backed by SEC filings: real AI demand, record margins, a repaired balance sheet, rising payouts. But the price paid for that assumes the best hard-drive cycle in years is a permanent state — while the reported profit is mostly a paper gain, three customers carry 43 percent of revenue, and insiders are mostly selling. Not investment advice.
- Fiscal-year quirk: a 52/53-week year ending on the Friday closest to June 30; "Q3 2026" means January through early April 2026, and fiscal year 2026 ends July 3, 2026 (53 weeks, with a 14-week Q1 — a small assist to nine-month growth).
- The Sandisk wind-down is nearly complete: as of April 3, 2026 Western Digital still held 1.7 million Sandisk shares (market value $1.19 billion) and swapped just over a million of them for its own shares in June 2026; mark-to-market effects can keep swinging reported earnings in either direction (FY 2025: minus $772 million, 9M FY 2026: plus $4.45 billion).
- From November 15, 2026, Western Digital can call the 2028 convertible note early; in June 2026 it already exchanged $858.4 million of face value for cash plus shares. Daily share-price swings of 6.8 percent (data as of July 9, 2026) — this is not a low-volatility name.
About the Company
Western Digital Corporation entwickelt, fertigt und verkauft Datenspeichergeräte und -lösungen auf Basis von Festplattentechnologie (HDD) in den USA, Asien, Europa, dem Nahen Osten und Afrika. Das Unternehmen bietet interne HDDs, Rechenzentrumslaufwerke und -plattformen sowie externe Laufwerke an.
| Employees | 40,000 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | San Jose, CA |
| Address | 5601 Great Oaks Parkway, 95119 San Jose, United States |
| Phone | 408 717 6000 |
| Website | westerndigital.com |
| IPO Date | 2. Jan 1987 |
| ISIN | US9581021055 |
| Stock Split | 1323:1000 on 02/24/2025 |
Management
| Name | Title | Birth Year |
|---|---|---|
| Tiang Yew Tan | CEO & Director | 1970 |
| Kris A. Sennesael | Executive VP & CFO | 1969 |
| Vidyadhara K. Gubbi | Executive VP & Chief of Global Operations | 1963 |
| Cynthia Lock Tregillis | Executive VP, Chief Legal Officer & Secretary | 1969 |
| Don R. Bennett | Senior Vice President of Finance | 1970 |
| Ahmed M. Shihab | Executive VP & Chief Product Officer | 1972 |
| C. Wesley M. Scott | Chief Investment Officer | 1947 |
| Brad D. Feller | Senior VP & Chief Accounting Officer | 1974 |
| Sesh Tirumala | Chief Information Officer | – |
| Ambrish Srivastava Ph.D. | Vice President of Investor Relations | – |
Executives per the latest required filings; titles kept in their original language. Source: fundamental data.
Insider Transactions
| Date | Person | Role | Type | Shares | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28. Jul 2026 | Cole Martin I | Director | Sell | 160 | 462.30 | 73,968 |
| 28. Jul 2026 | Cole Martin I | Director | Sell | 199 | 461.23 | 91,786 |
| 28. Jul 2026 | Cole Martin I | Director | Sell | 248 | 459.97 | 114,073 |
| 28. Jul 2026 | Cole Martin I | Director | Sell | 529 | 458.96 | 242,788 |
| 28. Jul 2026 | Cole Martin I | Director | Sell | 328 | 457.45 | 150,043 |
| 28. Jul 2026 | Cole Martin I | Director | Sell | 312 | 456.52 | 142,433 |
| 28. Jul 2026 | Cole Martin I | Director | Sell | 304 | 455.55 | 138,486 |
| 28. Jul 2026 | Cole Martin I | Director | Sell | 128 | 454.44 | 58,169 |
| 28. Jul 2026 | Cole Martin I | Director | Sell | 144 | 453.27 | 65,271 |
| 28. Jul 2026 | Cole Martin I | Director | Sell | 106 | 452.12 | 47,925 |
Reportable transactions by officers and major shareholders from SEC Form 4 filings. "Other" includes things like stock grants and option exercises without a buy/sell character.
View all insider transactions →Chart
Interactive price chart (TradingView).
Data as of: July 31, 2026 · Source: fundamental data & SEC filings (annual and quarterly reports, 10-K/10-Q)
Note: pure fact-based analysis, not investment advice and not a solicitation to buy or sell. All figures without guarantee.