NEW YORK, Jan 4, 2026, 15:00 ET — Market closed
- Western Digital shares closed Friday up 8.96% at $187.70; they rose about 0.7% in after-hours trading.
- The move extended a rally across storage and memory names, with Micron and Sandisk also posting big gains.
- Next on the calendar: U.S. employment data due Jan. 9 and consumer inflation data due Jan. 13.
Western Digital Corp (WDC) shares jumped 9% on Friday, the first trading day of 2026, closing at $187.70. The stock added about 0.7% after hours to $188.98.
The surge keeps attention on data-storage hardware as investors look for “picks-and-shovels” exposure to the AI buildout in data centers. Zacks Equity Research flagged Western Digital as one of 2025’s top performers, citing upward revisions to earnings expectations tied to cloud demand. Nasdaq
The timing matters because January brings a busy macro and earnings runway that can reset rate expectations and risk appetite. Reuters said the U.S. jobs report is due on Jan. 9, followed by consumer price index data on Jan. 13.
On Friday, Western Digital opened at $177.20 and traded between $176.70 and $187.77, with volume of about 6.8 million shares, according to Yahoo Finance historical data. It ended the session at $187.70.
The move was not isolated. Barron’s said Micron Technology rose 11% on the day and Sandisk jumped 16%, extending momentum that carried several AI-adjacent hardware names higher into year-end.
Zacks said analysts project Western Digital’s fiscal 2026 adjusted profit at $7.66 a share, more than 55% above the prior year, and noted that the company’s cloud end-market accounts for nearly 90% of revenue. The firm pointed to higher-capacity drive shipments aimed at “AI data lakes” — large pools of data stored for training and running AI models — as a demand driver. Nasdaq
Western Digital’s last formal update came on Oct. 30, when it posted fiscal first-quarter revenue of $2.82 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share — profit adjusted to exclude some items — of $1.78. CEO Irving Tan said the company was operating in a “strong demand environment driven by growth of data storage in the cloud.” Western Digital
Technically, the rally has pushed WDC back toward the top of its recent range. Macrotrends data show the stock’s 52-week high at $188.77, leaving the $188–$189 area as a near-term level traders are watching.
But the run-up also raises the risk of a sharper pullback if investors see signs that cloud spending is slowing or storage pricing is easing as earnings season approaches. Reuters noted that stocks are trading at historically lofty valuations, putting more pressure on companies to deliver strong results.
For now, traders will watch whether Friday’s jump holds when markets reopen on Monday, with the next major catalyst the U.S. employment report due Jan. 9.
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