Based on the aggregated intelligence of 125,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, disk drive maker Western Digital
With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Western Digital's business, and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.
Western Digital facts
Headquarters (founded) |
Lake Forest, Calif. (1970) |
Market Cap |
$3.40 billion |
Industry |
Computer Storage and Peripherals |
TTM Revenue |
$8.03 billion |
Management |
CEO John Coyne (since 2007) |
Return on Equity (average last three years) |
35.8% |
Competitors |
Seagate Technology |
CAPS members bullish on WDC also bullish on: |
Cisco Systems |
CAPS members bearish on WDC also bearish on: |
Advanced Micro Devices |
Sources: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's, and Motley Fool CAPS. TTM = trailing 12 months.
Over on CAPS, 93% of the 214 All-Star members who have rated Western Digital believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bulls include DRMRJ and FoolSolo, both of whom are ranked in the top 20% of our community.
In December, DRMRJ wrote that Western Digital is a business "whose products, marketing, & financials are excellent. Even if PC and notebook sales are down, the need for storage is constantly increasing as people store more data and pictures."
In a pitch from two weeks ago, DRMRJ highlighted the company's staying power:
They have a pile of cash, they generate a lot of cash, they have minimal and easily serviceable debt. ... Fears of disk drives being replaced by solid-state drives is overblown, and [Western Digital] has been severely punished for it. [Western Digital] will still make millions of disk drives to be sold in computers under $300 in emerging countries, and will still have healthy sales in every growing storage hungry applications in use throughout the world. Solid state augments, not replaces disk drives.
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