Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) Trading Down 7.2% – Should You Sell?

Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC)’s stock price fell 7.2% during trading on Wednesday . The company traded as low as $254.33 and last traded at $269.41. 14,653,804 shares changed hands during mid-day trading, an increase of 34% from the average session volume of 10,947,632 shares. The stock had previously closed at $290.24.

Key Western Digital News

Here are the key news stories impacting Western Digital this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Board authorizes an additional $4 billion share?repurchase program, signaling management thinks the stock remains undervalued and returning cash to shareholders; this buyback has been a near?term price support driver. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: Company unveiled an AI?focused storage roadmap (including a path to 100TB+ HDDs and UltraSMR adoption) at Innovation Day — this reinforces WDC’s positioning as a supplier of high?capacity data?lake drives for AI workloads. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: Analysts are raising targets and recommen­dations (Mizuho and Rosenblatt among those updating coverage to an outperform/buy with ~$340 targets), supporting upside expectations and institutional interest. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: Recent earnings and forward estimate revisions are improving — analysts note stronger-than-expected results and upward EPS revisions, which underpin near?term upside potential. Article Title
• Positive Sentiment: Macro theme: the “memory supercycle”/AI infrastructure rotation is boosting both high?speed flash (spun?out SanDisk) and high?capacity HDD demand — a structural tailwind for WDC’s data?center HDD business. Article Title
• Neutral Sentiment: U.S. policy efforts to diversify critical?minerals supply chains could help long?term hardware supply security but effects are multi?year and indirect for WDC. Article Title
• Negative Sentiment: Short?term risk: profit?taking and volatility after a strong run (and spillover from Sandisk’s wild intraday swings) can pressure WDC even when fundamentals are constructive; elevated trading volume suggests some traders are locking gains. Article Title

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of analysts have issued reports on WDC shares. The Goldman Sachs Group set a $250.00 target price on Western Digital in a research report on Tuesday. China Renaissance began coverage on Western Digital in a report on Friday, December 5th. They issued a “buy” rating and a $193.00 price objective for the company. New Street Research set a $250.00 price objective on Western Digital in a research note on Tuesday. TD Cowen upped their price objective on shares of Western Digital from $200.00 to $325.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, January 30th. Finally, Rosenblatt Securities reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $340.00 target price on shares of Western Digital in a research note on Wednesday. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty have given a Buy rating and three have issued a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $262.25.

Western Digital Stock Performance

The business’s fifty day moving average price is $198.69 and its 200-day moving average price is $140.59. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34, a current ratio of 1.46 and a quick ratio of 1.19. The stock has a market capitalization of $91.34 billion, a PE ratio of 27.02, a P/E/G ratio of 0.80 and a beta of 1.80.

Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, January 29th. The data storage provider reported $2.13 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.93 by $0.20. Western Digital had a return on equity of 41.53% and a net margin of 35.52%.The company had revenue of $3.02 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.93 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company earned $1.77 earnings per share. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 25.2% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, equities research analysts expect that Western Digital Corporation will post 4.89 EPS for the current year.

Western Digital Announces Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, March 18th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, March 5th will be given a dividend of $0.125 per share. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, March 5th. This represents a $0.50 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.2%. Western Digital’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 5.02%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, insider Cynthia L. Tregillis sold 2,801 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, December 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $160.57, for a total value of $449,756.57. Following the transaction, the insider owned 144,596 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $23,217,779.72. This represents a 1.90% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, Director Kimberly Alexy sold 1,768 shares of Western Digital stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 25th. The stock was sold at an average price of $154.00, for a total value of $272,272.00. Following the sale, the director directly owned 3,585 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $552,090. This trade represents a 33.03% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 6,816 shares of company stock worth $1,102,348. Corporate insiders own 0.18% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Trading of Western Digital

Hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Quadcap Wealth Management LLC raised its stake in shares of Western Digital by 2.1% during the fourth quarter. Quadcap Wealth Management LLC now owns 2,007 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $346,000 after acquiring an additional 41 shares in the last quarter. Moss Adams Wealth Advisors LLC boosted its stake in shares of Western Digital by 2.6% in the 4th quarter. Moss Adams Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 1,982 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $341,000 after purchasing an additional 51 shares in the last quarter. Bogart Wealth LLC grew its holdings in shares of Western Digital by 19.4% during the 4th quarter. Bogart Wealth LLC now owns 369 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $64,000 after purchasing an additional 60 shares during the last quarter. 44 Wealth Management LLC grew its holdings in shares of Western Digital by 0.8% during the 3rd quarter. 44 Wealth Management LLC now owns 9,329 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $1,120,000 after purchasing an additional 78 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Addison Advisors LLC raised its position in Western Digital by 7.1% in the 3rd quarter. Addison Advisors LLC now owns 1,281 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $154,000 after purchasing an additional 85 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 92.51% of the company’s stock.

About Western Digital

Western Digital Corporation is a global data storage company that designs, manufactures and sells a broad range of storage devices and systems for personal, enterprise and cloud applications. Headquartered in San Jose, California, the company develops hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), NAND flash components and finished storage products used in PCs, external storage, servers, network-attached storage (NAS) and embedded systems.

Its product portfolio spans consumer and commercial markets, including internal and external HDDs and SSDs, removable flash memory products and storage platforms for data center and enterprise environments.