Western Digital Q4 2025 Earnings Report

Western Digital EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $1.66
• Consensus EPS: $1.48
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.18
• One Year Ago EPS: $1.44

Western Digital Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $2.61 billion
• Expected Revenue: $2.45 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$153.50 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +30.00%

Western Digital Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2025
• Date: 7/30/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, July 30, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 4:30PM ET

Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) (NASDAQ: WDC) develops, manufactures and supplies data-storage products and solutions. The company’s portfolio is centered on hard disk drives (HDDs) used in cloud and enterprise data centers, personal computers, network-attached storage systems and other applications that require high-capacity data storage.

Western Digital markets products under brands including Western Digital, WD and Ultrastar. Its offerings include enterprise and data-center HDDs, storage products for business and consumer systems, and related technologies designed to help organizations store, manage and access large volumes of data.

Founded in 1970, Western Digital has evolved from a maker of electronic components into a global data-storage company. The business serves customers in North America, Europe, Asia and other international markets through direct sales, original-equipment manufacturers, distributors and retail channels.

Irving Tan has served as Western Digital’s chief executive officer since March 2025, succeeding David Goeckeler. Western Digital is headquartered in Irvine, California.

Western Digital Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Western Digital reported $2.6 B in revenue, a 41.3% non-GAAP gross margin, $1.66 EPS, and $675 M free cash flow, all above guidance.
• Positive Sentiment: The company reduced debt by $2.6 B to achieve 1–1.5× net leverage, initiated a $0.10 quarterly dividend, and launched a $2 B share repurchase program, repurchasing $150 M in Q4.
• Positive Sentiment: AI-driven demand for unstructured data is powering HDD growth, with ePMR/Ultra SMR shipments more than doubling to 1.7 M units and HAMR products on track for a 2027 ramp.
• Positive Sentiment: Western Digital secured firm POs/LTAs covering all top five hyperscalers for fiscal 2026 (and two into 2027), improving visibility and reducing traditional seasonality.
• Neutral Sentiment: For Q1 FY 2026, revenue is guided to $2.7 B ±$0.1 B, gross margin of 41–42%, and EPS of $1.54 ±$0.15, noting an extra week adds about $15–20 M in operating expenses.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good afternoon and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Western Digital's fourth quarter fiscal 2025 conference call. Presently all participants are in listen only mode. Later we will conduct a question and answer session at that time. If you would like to ask a question, you may press Star then one on your phone. As a reminder, this call is being recorded now. I will turn the call over to Mr. Ambrish Srivastava, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Thank you and good afternoon everyone. Joining me today are Irving Tan, Western Digital's Chief Executive Officer, and Kris Sennesael, Western Digital's Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements based on management's current assumptions and expectations, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements include expectations for our product portfolio, our business plans and performance, ongoing market trends, and our future financial results. We assume no obligation to update these statements. Please refer to our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our other filings with the SEC for more information on the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. In our prepared remarks, our comments will be related to non-GAAP results on a continuing operations basis unless stated otherwise.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Reconciliations between the non-GAAP and comparable GAAP financial measures are included in the press release and other materials that are being posted in the Investor Relations section of our website at investor.wdc.com. Lastly, I want to note that when we refer to we, us, our, or similar terms, we are referring only to Western Digital as a company and not speaking on behalf of the industry. With that, I will now turn the call over to Irving for introductory remarks.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Irving, thanks Ambrish. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us today. Let me first begin by welcoming and introducing Kris Sennesael, our new Chief Financial Officer. Kris brings extensive experience and a strong track record as a public company CFO. His leadership will be instrumental as we sharpen our focus on operational execution, accelerate our capital return program, and continue to create value for our shareholders. We are excited to have Kris on board. Let me now walk you through our business update. AI is ushering in a new era of data growth by fundamentally transforming how data is created, collected, processed, and stored, and more importantly, valued. Looking beyond large language models, which have been a key driver of storage needs, the emergence of agentic AI at scale in multiple industries is creating an increasing need to store unstructured data.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Agents customized with domain-specific knowledge will create a significant amount of distinct use cases and generate data at an unprecedented pace. To cite a few examples, applications leveraging agentic AI range from business tools like enterprise chatbots and code development assistants all the way to agents assisting in engineering design and development within our own engineering organization. We are already realizing tangible benefits of agentic AI to help accelerate our product development cycles. These trends are still in their early stages but are expanding rapidly across industries globally. As data becomes more valuable and central to AI-driven innovation, the need to store and retain it at scale grows in parallel. No storage technology matches the cost, efficiency, and reliability of HDDs, which remain the foundation of the world's data infrastructure, delivering unmatched value for mass storage in an AI-driven future. Against this backdrop, demand for our products continues to strengthen.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

We remain disciplined in managing capacity and are addressing long-term market demand through high-quality, reliable, larger capacity products. Shipments of our latest generation EPMR drives with capacity up to 26 TB CMR and 32 TB Ultra SMR more than doubled quarter over quarter, exceeding 1.7 million units in the June quarter. This marks one of the shortest qualification and ramp cycles in our history. The reliability, scalability, and TCO value of our EPMR and Ultra SMR technologies that delivers the fastest time to value for our customers is core to our continued success in the data center market. We aim to extend EPMR's strong track record of high-yield reliability and scalable performance into our next generation of HAMR drives. The feedback from tests at two of our hyperscale customers continues to be encouraging.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

I am pleased to note that we are ahead of our internal milestones with steady progress in areal density improvement and continue to focus on increasing long-term reliability and manufacturing yield of our HAMR products. Next, we will transition from testing to qualification stage with these customers, staying well on track for ramp in the first half of calendar year 2027. Meanwhile, our next generation of EPMR drives will complete qualification in the first half of calendar year 2026. These drives will continue to deliver strong TCO along with the hallmark reliability and predictability, paving the way for a smooth and economically sound transition to HAMR. In addition, the rapid rise of AI is also accelerating our platforms business. Our platforms technology enables us to deliver dense systems that extract the full performance and capacity of our drives.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

This business is building traction with infrastructure providers and is well positioned to support the growing number of native AI companies that do not have their own storage infrastructure teams. Let me now turn to our quarterly results and capital allocation updates for the fiscal fourth quarter. Western Digital delivered revenue of $2.6 billion, non-GAAP gross margin of 41.3%, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.66. Free cash flow for the quarter was $675 million. During the June quarter, we lowered our debt by $2.6 billion via a combination of using cash on hand and a debt-for-equity exchange of a portion of our stake in SanDisk. As a result, we have strengthened our balance sheet and achieved a net leverage target range of 1x to 1.5x. We communicated at our Investor Day in February in less than two quarters.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Keeping with our commitment to returning cash to shareholders, we initiated a quarterly cash dividend program and the board authorized a $2 billion share repurchase program. In our fiscal fourth quarter, we repurchased nearly $150 million worth of shares. Looking ahead, while the broader environment continues to be marked with uncertainty related to tariffs, we are seeing strong demand for our products driven by AI and related tailwinds in our business. Our visibility into our customers' plans continues to improve and we currently have firm POs and all LTAs with all of our top five hyperscale customers covering our entire fiscal year 2026. This close collaboration with our customers enables us to plan more effectively and address their growing needs for storage. For the fiscal first quarter of 2026, we expect continued revenue growth driven by data center demand and improved profitability led by adoption of our high capacity drives.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Let me now turn the call over to Kris, who will discuss our fiscal fourth quarter results and Q1 fiscal year 2026 guidance in more detail.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

Thank you Irving and good afternoon everyone. I'm honored to be joining you today for my first earnings call as the Chief Financial Officer of Western Digital. Over the past several weeks I had the opportunity to perform a deep dive into our business and met with many of our valued employees across the company. I also had several meaningful engagements with customers, suppliers and partners and the investor community. It's been a tremendously energizing experience, providing great insight into our strategic financial and operational priorities. It's clear to me that Western Digital is now operating as a strategically focused hard disk drive company. The company is leveraging its technology leadership position, operational excellence and deep customer engagements to provide innovative solutions to meet the evolving needs of its customers. This provides a strong foundation for growth, profitability and cash flow generation that creates long-term shareholder value.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, Western Digital delivered very strong financial results. Revenue was $2.6 billion, up 30% year-over-year and earnings per share was $1.66. Revenue and EPS were above the high end of the guidance range. We delivered 190 EB to our customers, up 32% year over year, driven by strong nearline shipments and the ramp of our 26 TB CMR and 32 TB Ultra SMR drives. Cloud represented 90% of total revenue at $2.3 billion, up 36% year-over-year, driven by strong demand for our higher capacity nearline product portfolio. Client represented 5% of total revenue at $140 million, up 2% year-over-year, and consumer also represented 5% of revenue at $136 million, down 12% year-over-year. Gross margin for the fiscal fourth quarter was 41.3%.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

Gross margin improved 610 basis points year over year on a continuing operating basis and was above our guidance range. The improved gross margin performance reflects continued mix shift towards higher capacity drives and tight cost control in our manufacturing sites and throughout the supply chain. Operating expenses were $345 million, slightly above guidance due to higher variable compensation on stronger than expected results. Operating income was $732 million, translating into an operating margin of 28.1%. Interest and other expenses were $52 million, a substantial reduction from the prior quarter due to the repayment of $2.6 billion of debt during the quarter. Taking into account an effective tax rate of 9.3% and a diluted share count of 362 million shares. EPS was $1.66, up 22% sequentially.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

Turning to the balance sheet, at the end of our fiscal fourth quarter, cash and cash equivalents were $2.1 billion and total liquidity was $3.4 billion, including the undrawn revolver capacity. During the quarter, we exchanged approximately 21 million shares of SanDisk for debt. As a result, our term loan A reduced by $800 million and we still own 7.5 million shares of SanDisk. In addition, we redeemed $1.8 billion of the senior unsecured notes, resulting in gross debt outstanding of $4.7 billion. At the end of fiscal 2025, we strengthened our balance sheet and achieved our target net leverage ratio of 1x-1.5x as outlined at our Investor Day. Operating cash flow for the fiscal fourth quarter was $746 million and capital expenditures were $71 million, resulting in strong free cash flow generation of $675 million for the quarter.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

Backed by strong cash flow generation, a robust balance sheet, and confidence in the fundamentals of our business, the Board authorized up to $2 billion of share repurchases. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 2.8 million shares for a total of $149 million. In addition, as announced during the last earnings call, the Board initiated a cash dividend of $0.10 per share, resulting in $36 million of dividend payments during the quarter. The Board also declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.10 per share of the company's common stock payable on September 18, 2025 to shareholders of record as of September 4, 2025. I will now turn to the outlook for the first quarter of fiscal 2026. This guidance includes our current estimate of all anticipated or known tariff-related impacts on our business in this period. We anticipate revenue to be $2.7 billion plus minus $100 million at the midpoint.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

This reflects a growth of approximately 22% year-over-year. Gross margin is expected to be between 41% and 42%. We expect operating expenses to increase on a sequential basis to a range of $370 million-$380 million, including an additional week of expenses as Q1 will.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

Be a 14-week quarter.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

Interest and other expenses are anticipated to be approximately $50 million. The tax rate is expected to be between 16% and 19%. As a result, we expect EPS to be $1.54 plus minus $0.15 based on a non-GAAP diluted share count of approximately 363 million shares. In closing, Western Digital is well positioned to succeed in the AI driven data economy. We remain committed to meeting our customers' growing storage needs while using our cash flow generation and strong balance sheet to deliver long term value for our shareholders. With that, I will now turn the call back to Irving.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Thank you, Kris. Western Digital's strong result and positive outlook this quarter reflects the ongoing successful execution of our strategy and the continued trust our customers place in the performance, reliability, and TCO advantages of our products. This combination of customer trust, strategic focus, and disciplined execution is driving our strong financial results. With that, let's now begin with the Q&A. Over to you, Ambrish.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Thank you, Irving. Operator, you can now open the line to questions, please. To ensure that we hear from as many analysts as possible, please ask one question at a time. After we respond, we will give you an opportunity to ask one follow up question.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Operator.

[Operator]

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question you may press Star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press Star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Erik Woodring with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

[Erik Woodring, Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley]

Hey guys, thank you.

[Erik Woodring, Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley]

Thank you very much for taking my questions and congrats on the results tonight.

[Erik Woodring, Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley]

You know, Kris, I wanted to kind.

[Erik Woodring, Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley]

Of better understand the gross margin guidance for the September quarter. You're calling for I believe 20 basis points of sequential gross margin expansion at the midpoint. Can you maybe just help us unpack maybe why we're seeing that sequential gross margin expansion slow into the September quarter? If there are any one timers or headwinds that are unusual in the quarter to call out and I'll just ask the follow up because it's related which is beyond September. I realize you have a 38% gross margin in your three year financial model. As we progress through this upcycle though, how should we be thinking about the incremental margins in this business and maybe help us dream the dream of what's possible during this upside of what's possible during this upcycle.

[Erik Woodring, Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley]

Thanks so much.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

Yes, thanks Eric for the question. First of all, I'm very pleased with the progress that we are making with our gross margin. As you probably recall, at the February investor day we had we announced a business model with a 38% gross margin. Last quarter, even before I joined the company, I was very pleased to see that the company for the first time had gross margins with a four handle in the 40% range. Last quarter in Q4 of fiscal 2025, I'm very pleased with the fact that we delivered 41.3% gross margin. Really good progress for many quarters in a row. As you know, in gross margins there's multiple elements that go into it. There is pricing, there is mix, there is cost. On each of those fronts I think the company is executing really well.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

Pricing is very stable environment, the mix is shifting in the right direction to higher capacity drives that is accretive to gross margins. The operational team is executing really well driving down cost reductions in the factories as well throughout the supply chain. I do believe there is further gross margin progression. We guided now Q1 of fiscal 2026 to 41%-42%. I'm confident that the team will execute well and continue to focus on further gross margin improvements over time.

[Erik Woodring, Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley]

Thank you very much.

[Operator]

press the button.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Next caller please.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Operator.

[Operator]

Yes, once again a reminder to please wait to ask your follow-up after management answers your first question. The next question comes from Aaron Rakers with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Your word is open. Yes.

[Aaron Rakers, Managing Director and Technology Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities]

For taking. Yeah, thanks for taking the question. I do have two and I'll wait to ask. Follow up, I guess the first question. You know, Kris, congrats on the results as well. But you know, you've taken the debt down, you're well within your targeted range of 1x-1.5x on a leverage ratio basis. You know, strong free cash flow generation. You've got $2.1 billion in cash on the balance sheet. I'm curious as you start to think about share repurchase activity going forward, how should we as investors think about that or how do you think about excess cash generation or the right level of cash on the balance sheet that you'll operate the business at, or rather the capacity for even stepping further on share repurchase going forward?

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

Aaron, that's a great question. Here again, I'm really pleased with what I've seen in the company as well in terms of capital, capital structure, and capital allocation. Just to summarize it as well, there is very strong free cash flow. Just last quarter, the first quarter as the standalone hard disk drive company, we generated $675 million of free cash flow, which was a 26% free cash flow margin. Not each and every quarter will be as strong as last quarter, but the business model is really a strong free cash flow business model. In addition to that, the company has done a great job at strengthening the balance sheet at the time of the separation as well as last quarter where we retired $2.6 billion of debt. Now getting to a net debt of $2.6 billion, which is on or about one time LTM EBITDA.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

Really good job there. There is no hesitation from the board to the management team to continue to return cash back to the shareholders through a combination of our dividend program and the share repurchase program. The dividend program we started with $0.10 per quarter. I think there is room to grow that dividend over time. We're going to be very thoughtful about that. There was also no hesitation to switch on the buyback the day it got approved. You saw we did $150 million. I think over time, as the cash flow generation continues to grow, we can do more and there will be no hesitation to execute the share repurchase program.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Do you have a follow up, Eric? Aaron, sorry?

[Aaron Rakers, Managing Director and Technology Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities]

yeah, yeah I do.

[Aaron Rakers, Managing Director and Technology Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities]

Thank you. One of the metrics that you guys have historically given and helped kind of bridge the hard disk drive versus the non hard disk drive business was the ASP. I did not see that in tonight's release. I am curious if that is something that you could talk to or I guess maybe put another way, you know, how do we think about the non HDD revenue in this most recent quarter?

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Yeah, Aaron, thanks for the question. This is Irving. Obviously ASP per terabytes is obviously a function of mix by and large, but I would say for last quarter ASP per terabytes was down low single digits.

[Aaron Rakers, Managing Director and Technology Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities]

Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Wamsi Mohan with Bank of America. Your line is open.

[Wamsi Mohan, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Yes, thank you so much and congrats on your solid results as well. Could you maybe help us think a little bit longer term here? When you look at sort of the revenue contribution, 90% coming from cloud, does it really mean that the seasonality in the business is going to be materially different? What I'm particularly wondering is should we be thinking that you're just going to see sequential growth as demand is kind of strong still, all indications of cloud CapEx remain very strong, that you could grow through even typically a seasonal weak or light quarter like the March quarter. I will follow up.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Thanks Wamsi for the question. Look, I think you sort of got it well in the sense that we're structurally quite a different business today than we were in the past. As you highlighted, 90% of our business is in the data center. A large portion of that business is driven by a few set of key hyperscale customers that we have. They have multi-year CapEx programs to really invest in their data storage assets both to support the ongoing growth in the cloud and to also support the additional tailwind that they see coming from the AI revolution as well.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

That plus the fact that we also now have moved to a 52-week lead time program with them and as we've highlighted, we have POs or all LTAs for all five of our top customers spanning the entire fiscal year 2026 and for two out of five of them all the way to the middle of fiscal year 2027, we don't think that the seasonality of the past applies anymore. It's really driven by the cloud CapEx spend of the big hyperscalers in terms of their new data center deployments, their refresh cycles as well. Having said that, we do recognize that we are in a cyclical business. At some point those cycles, there will be periods of digestion as we highlighted in our Q3 result as well. We pretty much have a really good handle on how the business is flowing over a 12-month, 18-month time frame.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

If I summarize it, you got it pretty right. The traditional seasonality of the past doesn't really apply to this business a lot more. It's really driven by the programs that our hyperscale customers have in terms of new data centers coming online and their refresh cycles.

[Wamsi Mohan, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Okay, that's super helpful, Irving. As my follow up, Kris, I just want to go back to the incremental margin question that Eric asked around and you answered with the moving pieces being price, mix and cost. If we think about the sequential improvement in this June quarter of 120 bps.

[Wamsi Mohan, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America]

What would you say was the biggest.

[Wamsi Mohan, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Driver between those three elements? As we look forward, where do you see the most opportunity? I would think that the pricing is what it's going to be. It's pretty stable. It's kind of not maybe a huge incremental driver. Should we think that Mix is really the biggest contributor on a go forward basis as you mix up to these Ultra SMR drives or should I be thinking about it differently? Thank you so much.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

No, you have it right. Mix is the most important item that we as a company focus on. That is why we continue to invest in our technology and product roadmaps and really focusing on higher capacity drives. That is something that our customers are asking us for. That is something we are working and collaborating with our customers on. It is a win win situation for us. Higher capacity drives typically translates into higher gross margin and the company is executing really well on that.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Yeah, maybe.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Wamsi, this is Irving. I'll just add on to what Kris said. I echo exactly what he said. It's really driven very much by mix. You would have seen that our latest generation of EPMR drives at 26 TB CMR and 32 TB Ultra SMR, the number of units that we ship doubled in the second quarter, out from just over 800,000 units in last quarter to over 1.7 million units this quarter. That's a clear recognition of our customers seeing the TCO value that it delivers, the strong reliability that it delivers, and quality that they are comfortable and used to from our EPMR drives. As I've highlighted in the past as well, these drives are not only at the leading edge of capacity points, but the ability of our operations teams to deliver very high yields is also adding to the profitability of that business.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

We look forward to introducing our next generation EPMR drives in the not too distant future. I think there will be continued room to continue to deliver value, innovation, TCO benefit that we can benefit from, and drive further margin expansion.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Thank you, Wamsi.

[Wamsi Mohan, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from karl Ackerman with BNP Paribas. Your line is now open.

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

Yes, thank you.

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

Thank you, gentlemen. One of the main ways you.

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

Have driven higher margins is from the adoption of Ultra SMR.

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

I was hoping if you could.

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

Discuss the adoption curve and willingness of hyperscalers to grow their hard drive fleets.

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

Based exclusively on Ultra SMR?

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

I guess.

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

Is there a certain workload, are there?

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

Certain workloads where Ultra SMR is disadvantaged that would prevent you from attaining perhaps 100% of your fleet on Ultra SMR? Thank you.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Hey karl, thanks for the question. We have in the past had two key customers on Ultra SMR. We've just completed the qualification of a third hyperscale customer out of our top five on Ultra SMR. You're starting to ramp Ultra SMR in the second half of the calendar year. We now have a fourth customer in the process of qualifying Ultra SMR as well. You know, again to reiterate, it's very important to note that Ultra SMR is a technology that is, that will be extensible into HAMR as well. As we transition into our HAMR products in the not too distant future, we will be able to deliver that on the Ultra SMR platforms as well to enable our customers to take advantage of the incremental capacity points within that. Specifically, a question around workloads. You know, it really depends on the application.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Even in the existing customer environments that do use Ultra SMR today, there are some specific legacy workloads that they buy. Lower capacity drives, 18 TB, 20 TB drives. What we are seeing is that for any new workloads that they are bringing to the market, it's all on the highest capacity points that they can adopt, which is typically on Ultra SMR.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Do you have a follow-up, karl?

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

I do, if I may.

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

You and your peer have seen the strongest visibility in terms of order rates and really the longest time ever. That clearly speaks to the demand requests from hyperscale customers.

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

Clearly they would love to have you add capacity given the longer lead times.

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

The sophistication of these customers. How do you balance the visibility with.

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

Those customers as well as the demand.

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

Demand request for those customers as you plan your capacity planning and they can plan their hyperscale buildouts for the next two years.

[Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas]

Thank you.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Yeah, thanks. It's a great question. On the demand signal, I think the first step was really to educate our customers on the long lead times as the products become much more sophisticated as we move to higher capacity drives. We have highlighted, and they're aware, that really the long lead times are driven by the head wafers that we have to produce that take roughly nine months to produce a head wafer and another three months to convert them into a head stack. One year lead time on that component alone, and that's been instrumental in driving us to that 12-month LTA visibility. We are now also having conversations with them, as I've highlighted, with two of them we now have 18-months visibility. That really is key in terms of that partnership to get greater visibility to support their growth requirements.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

That's giving us a lot of insight into how we need to accelerate our areal density improvements in our products. That also is a function of why you saw the very rapid take up of our latest generation of EPMR drives. I think we will see something very similar in our next generation of EPMR drives out very soon as well. Again, the focus is on really delivering increased areal density to our customers through technologies like Ultra SMR Optinen. If there's any investment that we do need to make into capacity, it's really on the head and media side of our business to support areal density improvement.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Thank you, karl.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Asiya Merchant with Citigroup. Your line is now open.

[Asiya Merchant, Technology Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup]

Great, thank you. Thanks for taking my question. I think in the last call there.

[Asiya Merchant, Technology Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup]

Was some discussion on tariffs and some.

[Asiya Merchant, Technology Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup]

Potential for enterprise slowdown. Just curious if you have anything to suggest there, any updates there, and you know, how do we make sure, how do we, how are you making sure that some of the demand is not just related to tariff pull forward? Thank you.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Yeah, thanks Asiya for the question. I guess there are two parts to the question. First on the enterprise demand, we called it out as a risk with the potential concern that the impact of tariffs might have, we have not seen that materialize. Obviously the tariffs, some of the reciprocal tariffs got pushed out as well. We have not seen that yet. Again, as I highlighted some of the potential softness in enterprise which did not materialize, we would pick up in the cloud anyway because enterprises would move from CapEx to consumption-based models. We sort of netted off regardless, but we have not seen any of that risk materialize. To your second question about tariffs, it is a very fluid and dynamic situation, but we do not see any double ordering based on the analysis that we have done.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

We look at in-quarter linearity trends and they are very similar to what we have seen historically. We compare that against the 12-month lead times that our customers have given us either through firm POs or through LTAs and they are pretty much matching those same projections to the T. Last but not least, we are in a very, very tight supplier environment. Our ability to deliver upside within a quarter is also very limited. For those reasons and the fact that we do monitor our customer inventory levels the best we can, we do not see any pull forwards as a result of tariffs as of now.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Thank you for your two questions, Asiya. We'll go to the next caller please.

[Operator]

Yes, the next question comes from Tom O'Malley with Barclays. Your line is now open.

[Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays]

Hi guys, thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to make sure I heard this correctly. You guys said ASPs in the June.

[Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays]

Quarter were down low single digits, is that correct?

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

Tom saw ASPs per drive continue to go up as we move to higher capacity drives, but ASP per terabytes was slightly down, but mostly driven by mix because the price environment is very stable.

[Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays]

Got it.

[Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays]

That makes sense.

[Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays]

I guess as a follow up, if you look at the market today, I think that your competitor had talked about an exabyte target where after that certain target I think they said.

[Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays]

Around 160 EB they would need to see growth really exclusively from technology transitions.

[Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays]

I asked you last quarter, but in.

[Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays]

Terms of where you guys stand, is there any mark that you would call?

[Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays]

Out as that kind of, as that.

[Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays]

Kind of waterfall. Is there a spot?

[Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays]

That you would say from this point.

[Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays]

Forward, we only need technology transitions to move forward just in your ability to.

[Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays]

Capacity kind of constrain the market, anything you have there?

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Yeah, Tom, I would say that if you look at the last quarter we delivered 190 EB and that's really a result of the latest generation of EPMR drives that we've delivered. Our ability to not only produce higher capacity drives but our ability to produce them at scale with high yields I think has really differentiated us. We are laser focused on continuing to ensure we have high yields of our components, our drives, and continuing to deliver products to our customers at scale. As a result, we don't have to make any incremental investments into capacity.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Thank you. Next call please.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Operator.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Amit Daryanani with Evercore. Your line is open.

[Amit Daryanani, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

Thanks.

[Amit Daryanani, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

I guess maybe to start with, I was hoping you folks could spend a bit of time on talking about how does the extra week flow through your P&L and you know, on the revenue and OpEx side and what's the right OpEx runway to think about.

[Amit Daryanani, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

Beyond that extra week?

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

Yeah, on the revenue side, our customers, they think in quarterly buckets in line with their long term forecasts and LTAs and POs that they have placed. So we do not really see much. On the revenue side, there might be a little bit of a benefit in the consumer retail side of the business, but as you know, that is relatively small for Western Digital. On the OpEx side, however, it is an extra week. I would say it is only about $15.15 million of incremental spend that happens in Q1 of fiscal 2026. Obviously looking ahead to Q2, Q3, Q4 that comes out of it as those quarters are normal 13 week quarter.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

follow up Amit.

[Amit Daryanani, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

I do, thanks a lot, Irving. You initially, I think, spoke a good bit about agentic AI deployments and how that could drive demand for HDD. If I think about your Analyst Day, you talked about like 20% exabyte growth, mid to high single-digit revenue growth for the company.

[Amit Daryanani, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

As you start to see AI getting.

[Amit Daryanani, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

Deployed, I'm wondering how do you think those numbers can move higher and if there's a way to quantify what kind of tailwind this would provide for your business longer term. Thank you.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Yeah, thanks Amit, for the question. Yeah, if you recall what we presented, Investor Day was a base model of 15 EB growth that was primarily driven by the secular growth in the cloud. And we highlighted the potential upside of that 15 EB CAGR growth to 23% as a result of an AI uplift. We're starting to see some of that uplift materialize. It is still early days, but we think that the exabyte growth is more between that 15-23% range rather than the base number that we've highlighted. In that model that we presented at Investor Day, we also had a 7% ASP decline.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

As Kris highlighted, we're seeing a much lower ASP decline in the low single digits as well. As we see exabyte growth trend more to that 23% level and ASP is in the low single digits, there is definitely opportunity for revenue growth from a CAGR perspective to go from the sort of mid to high single digit range that we have highlighted at Investor Day to trend more towards the mid teens. If you take that mid teens revenue growth with the OPEX levels that we've highlighted, we will probably be at an OPEX level of 10% of OPEX to revenue. Hopefully that gives you a sense of bridging what we shared at Investor Day and the changing outlook that we see in the business as a result of the AI tailwinds that we're beginning to highlight.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Thank you Amit.

[Amit Daryanani, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Ananda Baruah with Loop Capital. Your line is now open.

[Ananda Baruah, Analyst at Loop Capital Markets]

Yeah. Good afternoon guys. Thanks for taking the question. I really appreciate it too. If I could, I'll go one into one. Could you, Irving, could you remind us of the aerial density roadmap from here until HAMR? And where do you think HAMR, where do you think you come out aerial density wise? Let's say you sort of execute through the first half 2020 calendar year 2027 roadmap, where do you think your ALW is there? The roadmap up to that point and then where do you think you come out at with HAMR?

[Ananda Baruah, Analyst at Loop Capital Markets]

Thanks.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Sure, no problem. So our current EPMR product that we've brought into the marketplace is a 26 TB CMR, 32 TB Ultra SMR. We have highlighted in our roadmap that we look to start qualification for our next generation of EPMR, which will be our final generation of EPMR, in the first half of calendar year 2026. That will be a 28 TB CMR, 36 TB Ultra SMR. We will start qualification of HAMR in the second half of calendar year 2027, with ramp in the first half of calendar year 2027. That will be at the 38 TB CMR, 44 TB Ultra SMR. As we've highlighted in the past, we feel the 4 TB per platter, if you assume a 10 disk drive, 40 TB drive, 4 TB per platter is sort of where we see things as of now.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

The economic crossover where it makes economic sense to transition to HAMR.

[Ananda Baruah, Analyst at Loop Capital Markets]

That's great. Thanks.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Sure. Follow up on it.

[Ananda Baruah, Analyst at Loop Capital Markets]

I do Ambrish and really more of a clarification. You guys mentioned the platforms business and opportunity to sell dense systems into native AI. Companies do not have their own infrastructure teams. Are those the new cloud? Is that what you are talking about? And then how many of the like and if yes like what is a useful way to think about, you know, which, which of that CAGR may not have their own infrastructure teams. I would imagine some of the larger ones do. Just any useful context would be a helpful thing.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Sure.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Thanks for the question. I'll give you some insight that we actually do have really one large.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Cloud.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Provider that is buying platforms from us today that is being deployed at scale. We also have quite a significant number of storage as a service providers that are leveraging our platforms business as well to deliver those services to customers. As you have highlighted, a lot of the Neoclouds, their primary focus is really on driving compute capability, supporting their customers with their LLM development, and then really looking at how they can either leverage the cloud or our platform-like systems to really support their storage requirements going forward. We think there is a lot of legs to this business. Obviously, it is early days and very similar to what we saw in the cloud.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

It starts with compute and then eventually it will come down to storage as we saw even in AI in the mainstream cloud where it was GPUs first, HBMs, DRAMs, and then eventually we are seeing that flow through to storage. We think that sort of trend will play itself out in the Neoclouds as well and be very beneficial for our platforms business.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Thank you, Ananda.

[Operator]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our last questioner today will come from Mark Miller with The Benchmark Company. Your line is open.

[Mark Miller, Equity Research Analyst at Benchmark Company]

Thank you for the question. I'm just wondering, could you actually quantify the hard drive ASPs in the quarter?

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Sorry, what's the question?

[Mark Miller, Equity Research Analyst at Benchmark Company]

What were your hard drive ASPs in the June quarter?

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

You mean unit.

[Mark Miller, Equity Research Analyst at Benchmark Company]

The average selling price at. Yeah, for your hard drives?

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

yes.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

As you see in our disclosures, this is Ambrish, we have stopped providing ASP per unit because as Irving highlighted earlier that what's more important for.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

A business is EP.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Just to give you context of why we changed and what we're.

[Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations at Western Digital]

Providing now, kris, you want to add to that?

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

Yeah, and I think we provided the units and so I think you can easily do the math and you will see, I think a substantial sequential as well as year-over-year growth in our revenue per drive that we have. Again, a lot of it depends on the mix of our overall revenue. For me that number is somewhat meaningful. Yes, it's trending upwards again, mostly driven by the move to higher capacity drives, something that we work with our customers on.

[Mark Miller, Equity Research Analyst at Benchmark Company]

Just finally DSOs for the quarter.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

DSO.

[Mark Miller, Equity Research Analyst at Benchmark Company]

Right.

[Kris Sennesael, CFO at Western Digital]

I don't have it on the top of my head. But we did as a company, we did a really good job at managing our working capital. I'm very comfortable with the level of inventory that we have right now, which is on or about $1.3 billion. That translates into days of inventory of 76 days. The DSOs came down, I believe six days on a sequential basis and is now at 52 days. Again, really, as you know, DSOs is mostly driven by the billings linearity within the quarter. As Irving indicated before, that continues to be very strong as well.

[Mark Miller, Equity Research Analyst at Benchmark Company]

Thank you.

[Operator]

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Irving Tan for any closing remarks.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

Thank you all again for joining us today and your interest in Western Digital. As our results and guidance show, we continue to make good progress executing on our strategy and we look forward to sharing more on the exciting innovations we have in the pipeline and actions we are taking towards creating long-term shareholder value. In future calls, let me close by giving a call out to all our WD drivers who show up every day making a difference for our customers, shareholders, ecosystem partners and each other. Thank you all very much and have.

[Irving Tan, CEO at Western Digital]

A great day ahead.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Ambrish Srivastava, VP of Investor Relations
• Irving Tan, CEO
• Kris Sennesael, CFO

Analysts

• Erik Woodring, Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley
• Aaron Rakers, Managing Director and Technology Analyst at Wells Fargo Securities
• Wamsi Mohan, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America
• Karl Ackerman, Managing Director of Equity Research at BNP Paribas
• Asiya Merchant, Technology Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup
• Thomas O'Malley, Equity Research Director at Barclays
• Amit Daryanani, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI
• Ananda Baruah, Analyst at Loop Capital Markets
• Mark Miller, Equity Research Analyst at Benchmark Company