New York, Feb 2, 2026, 11:30 (EST) — Regular session
- Seagate shares jumped roughly 5% in late morning trading, outperforming a volatile Nasdaq
- Investors continue to favor data-center hardware stocks amid ongoing interest in AI spending
- U.S. data and megacap earnings this week may quickly shift risk appetite
Shares of Seagate Technology Holdings plc jumped 4.8% to $427.30 on Monday, hitting an intraday peak of $434.60. Western Digital, its competitor, climbed 5.8% to $264.82.
The gain comes amid a jittery, picky market. Gold and silver dipped early after CME Group hiked margin requirements, while volatility edged up as investors digested policy risks following Donald Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh to replace Jerome Powell in May. Jim Baird of Plante Moran Financial Advisors described it as “a change in mindset in terms of where equity investors are looking for leadership.” Reuters
TrendForce’s latest take on the data-center supply chain keeps the pressure on memory prices. The firm forecasts conventional DRAM contract prices—key for servers and PCs—could spike 90% to 95% in the first quarter compared with last quarter, driven by demand that’s “worsening the global memory supply and demand imbalance.” Reuters
Seagate’s own story has been
On Jan. 27, Seagate projected fiscal third-quarter revenue and adjusted profit to top Wall Street expectations, following a strong December-quarter performance; adjusted figures exclude specific items. CEO Dave Mosley highlighted that “modern data centers increasingly need storage solutions that combine performance and cost-efficiency at exabyte-scale,” referring to storage in billions of gigabytes. Reuters
On the earnings call, Mosley told analysts that “our nearline capacity is fully allocated through calendar year 2026,” referring to the high-capacity hard drives used in cloud data centers. He added that Seagate plans to begin accepting orders for the first half of 2027 in the coming months and highlighted a ramp-up in HAMR — heat-assisted magnetic recording, which boosts data density on each disk. The Motley Fool
Seagate reported $723 million in operating cash flow and $607 million in free cash flow for the quarter ending Jan. 2, according to its earnings release. The company also retired $500 million of exchangeable notes maturing in 2028 and announced a dividend of $0.74 per share, payable April 8 to shareholders recorded by March 25.
Wall Street has pushed the numbers up since the earnings came out. Morgan Stanley bumped its price target to $468, Evercore ISI climbed to $450, and Bernstein put a $500 target in a separate report.
This rally isn’t limited to Seagate. Western Digital last week projected quarterly revenue beating estimates, citing strong demand for hard drives and flash storage powering AI servers. That boosted the sector’s momentum further.
That said, the risks are real. The surge in AI-related capex demands heavy funding, and investors don’t hesitate to sell if returns seem uncertain. Oracle, for instance, plans to raise between $45 billion and $50 billion in 2026 via stock offerings and bonds to back its data-center buildout linked to OpenAI.
Traders tracking Seagate will focus on whether prices remain firm amid tight supply and if long-term contracts extend further into 2027 volumes. The bigger test lies in the macro picture: this week’s U.S. labor figures and a flood of megacap earnings from Alphabet, Amazon, and Advanced Micro Devices. Friday’s payrolls report could well dictate the market mood for the days ahead.
