New York, January 9, 2026, 14:10 EST — Regular session
Seagate Technology Holdings plc (STX.O) gained 5.4% to $299.92 in afternoon trade, bouncing back from a steep slide the prior day and moving higher alongside storage peers. Western Digital (WDC.O) added 4.3%. Goldman Sachs raised its price target on Seagate to $310 from $280 and reiterated a Buy rating, citing bullish 2026 pricing forecasts.
Why it matters now: Seagate is heading into the stretch of the quarter when investors tend to square positions ahead of results and guidance. The company has not confirmed a date for its next report, but Nasdaq’s earnings calendar estimates it around Jan. 20.
Risk assets got a better tailwind on Friday after a softer U.S. jobs report helped keep rate-cut hopes in play. “This is a report that’s somewhat within the range of expectations of investors, so they’re not reacting,” said Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide. Reuters
Thursday’s move said plenty. Seagate finished down 7.7% at $284.47 after trading in a $278.15 to $306.24 range, according to Yahoo Finance data.
Separately, Seagate got a late-Thursday boost after a U.S. appeals court revived key antitrust claims in its lawsuit against Japan’s NHK Spring, which it accuses of price-fixing suspension assemblies used in hard disk drives. Seagate said it was “pleased by the court’s decision” and intends to keep pushing the case in district court. Reuters
Seagate sells hard disk drives, or HDDs, for storing huge amounts of data in cloud and enterprise systems, and it also has a smaller SSD lineup. Western Digital is the closest U.S.-listed rival in high-capacity storage hardware.
Investors are also keeping an eye on how Seagate handles its own targets for the quarter. In its last results, Seagate forecast fiscal second-quarter revenue of $2.70 billion plus or minus $100 million and adjusted earnings per share of $2.75 plus or minus $0.20, helped in part by storage demand tied to generative AI buildouts. Adjusted results exclude certain items and can diverge from standard accounting profit.
But the bar keeps rising. If HDD pricing cools off, or big cloud customers pull back on orders after a rapid buildout phase, the stock could surrender more of its recent gains — even as analyst targets move higher.
The next catalyst is the quarterly report itself. Seagate has yet to confirm the date, but MarketBeat estimates the release for Jan. 20. Traders will be watching for any reset to the pricing and margin story, and how much weight to put on the NHK Spring case as it heads back to the trial court.
