New York, January 8, 2026, 20:49 EST — Market closed
- Seagate shares fell 7.7% on Thursday, extending a two-day pullback in storage names
- Storage peers SanDisk and Western Digital also slid as investors trimmed tech exposure
- Traders turn to Friday’s U.S. jobs report and Seagate’s late-month earnings for the next catalyst
Seagate Technology Holdings plc shares fell 7.7% to close at $284.47 on Thursday, giving back more of this week’s sharp run-up in the data-storage group.
The drop came as investors stepped away from “AI-linked” memory and storage winners after a strong start to the year. SanDisk fell 5.4% and Western Digital dropped 6.1% as the broader Nasdaq slipped and the S&P 500’s tech index lagged. Reuters
Macro nerves were in the mix. Weekly jobless claims rose to 208,000 and economists in a Reuters poll expect December nonfarm payrolls to increase by about 60,000 jobs, with the unemployment rate seen easing to 4.5%, ahead of Friday’s report. “Firms are successfully doing more with less labor,” said Matthew Martin, a senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. Reuters
Seagate had already fallen 6.7% in the prior session as storage stocks started to cool off following “a recent rally,” according to a separate Reuters market report. “Investors have come into 2026 with a similar playbook to last year: Buy tech and forget about it,” said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive of Longbow Asset Management. Reuters
After the close on Thursday, a U.S. appeals court revived key antitrust claims Seagate brought against Japan’s NHK Spring, a case tied to alleged price-fixing of suspension assemblies used in hard disk drives. Seagate said it was “pleased” with the decision, while NHK and its lawyers did not immediately comment. Reuters
The next hard catalyst for STX is earnings. Zacks expects Seagate to report its next quarterly results on January 20.
On the fundamentals, Seagate has guided for fiscal second-quarter revenue of $2.70 billion, plus or minus $100 million, and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $2.75, plus or minus $0.20. In the same release, it said its quarterly cash dividend is $0.74 a share, payable January 9.
Investors are also watching the share-count math after the stock’s surge. In a company document updated as of January 2, Seagate said the “if-converted method” (an EPS approach that assumes certain convertible debt is exchanged into shares) implied about 6.5 million shares of non-GAAP dilution for the quarter, based on a VWAP of $260.46. Q4 Capital
Thursday’s tape was messy. The stock opened at $305.88, traded as low as $278.15 and finished below the $300 level that had acted like a line in the sand earlier this week.
The risk for bulls is simple: if Friday’s jobs report or rates repricing hits big-tech sentiment again, or if Seagate’s results and outlook land below its own ranges, the pullback can keep going. What traders watch next is Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report, then Seagate’s January 20 earnings and any update on demand from its largest cloud customers.
