New York, January 30, 2026, 17:30 EST — After-hours
- Shares dropped roughly 10% on Friday, ending a volatile day for Western Digital.
- Late Thursday, the company’s March-quarter revenue and profit forecasts surpassed Wall Street’s expectations.
- Attention turns to Feb. 3 Innovation Day, with storage rivals reacting to AI demand cues.
Western Digital shares dropped 10.1% on Friday, closing near the low of the day. In after-hours trading, the stock hovered around $250.23. During the session, prices swung between $237.70 and $296.80, with volume topping 21 million shares.
Late Thursday, San Jose’s Western Digital gave a fiscal Q3 revenue forecast of $3.2 billion, plus or minus $100 million—well above the $2.96 billion analysts expected, per LSEG data. The company also projected adjusted EPS of $2.30, plus or minus 15 cents, beating the $1.96 estimate. It noted strong demand linked to AI servers. After the release, shares ticked up about 2% in after-hours trading, having already more than tripled in 2025. (Reuters)
The numbers are crucial since storage has turned into a crowded play amid the AI buildout, with expectations outpacing supply chains. Hyperscalers—the largest cloud players—can pivot their orders swiftly, causing stocks to move ahead of the quarter’s close.
Western Digital, which spun off its flash business into Sandisk back in 2025, reported a 25% jump in second-quarter revenue to $3.02 billion. Adjusted earnings came in at $2.13 per share. The company’s adjusted gross margin rose to 46.1%, while free cash flow, the cash left after expenses, hit $653 million. It also announced a $0.125-per-share dividend payable on March 18. CEO Irving Tan described the quarter as “disciplined execution” with strong demand for high-capacity drives “at scale.” CFO Kris Sennesael highlighted “continued data center demand” in the outlook for the March quarter. (Western Digital)
Hard disk drives (HDDs) save data on spinning disks and typically come with a lower cost per capacity unit. Solid-state drives (SSDs), on the other hand, rely on flash memory and deliver faster performance. Data centers frequently combine both, leveraging HDDs for large-scale storage and SSDs where speed matters most.
Despite Friday’s decline, some analysts stayed bullish. Barclays’ Tom O’Malley praised the company’s “opportunistic pricing and visibility” as “unprecedented,” boosting his price target from $240 to $325. Evercore ISI followed suit, raising its target as well, according to Investor’s Business Daily. (Investors)
The sector remained volatile. Seagate Technology dropped 8.7% on Friday, while Sandisk climbed 6.8% following wild swings tied to its earnings report.
The AI-storage narrative hinges on just slight shifts in pricing or order flow. Should cloud clients hold back on buying, or if supply ramps up sooner than anticipated, the margin gains investors are banking on could vanish fast.
U.S. markets are shut for the weekend, leaving traders to watch Monday closely to see if Friday’s selloff draws in buyers or triggers further de-risking. The stock’s been reacting more to guidance than headlines.
Western Digital announced it will hold an Innovation Day in New York on Feb. 3, with a webcast from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. ET. Investors will be eager for clearer insights on the product roadmap and whether management expects supply constraints and pricing pressure to persist into the March quarter. (Western Digital)
