You've heard it from Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and IBM (NYSE:IBM), and I expect Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) to join the Greek chorus in the coming days: Consumers and enterprises are buying technology again.
The latest singer of those sweet words is computer storage giant Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX). Reporting a stellar second quarter, Seagate notched 36% unit volume growth and 33% higher sales year over year, with revenue tagged at $3.0 billion and earnings shooting past any reasonable expectation to $1.03 per share.
CEO Steve Luczo said that Seagate's manufacturing facilities are running full blast and still having trouble keeping up with customer demand. Seagate, alongside rivals like Western Digital (NYSE:WDC), is also exhausting the supply of important hard-drive components like the glass planes on which they deposit magnetic materials to make storage disks. Seagate isn't big in SSD storage -- yet.
In response to the heavy demand, Seagate is building out its manufacturing capacity to keep up with an expected 15% to 20% increase in order volumes for the year. Some of the catalysts for increased computer component demand, such as a real economic recovery and en masse upgrades from old machines running XP and Vista to Microsoft Windows 7, are not yet fully reflected in this quarter’s results. Those demand boosters should materialize in the second half of 2010, according to Luczo and others.
Computer component manufacturers are sitting pretty right now; the stars have aligned for a sector recovery of rare magnitude. Seagate's stock is up 360% over the last year, bouncing like a spring-loaded rubber ball off a $2.98 bottom in early 2009. That screaming recovery is right in tune with peers like Western Digital.
With much of the pogo-stick action yet to materialize, I'm wondering which computer-related stock you think has the most elasticity left to harvest. The comments box below is anxiously waiting for your input.
