Waterloo Capital L.P. Makes New Investment in Western Digital Corporation $WDC

Waterloo Capital L.P. bought a new position in Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) in the third quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor bought 2,116 shares of the data storage provider’s stock, valued at approximately $254,000.

Other hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the company. SYM FINANCIAL Corp acquired a new position in Western Digital in the second quarter valued at $225,000. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. raised its position in shares of Western Digital by 12.3% in the 3rd quarter. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. now owns 52,317 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $6,281,000 after acquiring an additional 5,731 shares in the last quarter. LBP AM SA acquired a new position in shares of Western Digital in the 3rd quarter valued at about $641,000. Nordea Investment Management AB boosted its position in shares of Western Digital by 9.6% during the 2nd quarter. Nordea Investment Management AB now owns 30,434 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $1,938,000 after purchasing an additional 2,656 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Callan Family Office LLC acquired a new stake in Western Digital during the second quarter worth approximately $919,000. 92.51% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Key Stories Impacting Western Digital

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

• Positive Sentiment: Board approved an incremental $4 billion share-repurchase program — a large, explicit capital-return move that supports demand for the stock and signals confidence from the board. Reuters: Western Digital adds $4 billion to buyback plan
• Positive Sentiment: Innovation Day unveiled an AI-focused storage roadmap (claims of up to 8x performance improvements and path to 100TB+ HDDs), reinforcing WDC’s positioning in AI training/data-center storage — supports longer-term demand expectations. PCWorld: WD maps out 8x performance boosts
• Positive Sentiment: Analyst community is upgrading WDC and lifting targets (several notes to Buy/Overweight and new street-high targets), which fuels short-term momentum and buy-side interest. Barchart: New street-high price target
• Positive Sentiment: Recent quarterly results beat estimates (revenue and EPS strength) and reinforce the “memory supercycle” / AI-driven storage demand thesis — supports earnings growth expectations. Zacks: WDC is up 5.85% in one week
• Neutral Sentiment: Sandisk’s dramatic rally (spun out from WDC) is lifting sentiment across the memory/storage complex — helpful for WDC thematically but also highlights increased sector volatility and comparatives. MarketBeat: Sandisk’s Swings Are Getting Bigger
• Neutral Sentiment: Broader policy moves to secure supply chains for critical minerals are supportive over the long run for domestic hardware supply, but they are not an immediate stock catalyst. MarketBeat: Critical minerals policy
• Negative Sentiment: CEO Irving Tan sold 20,000 shares (~$5.1M) in early February (SEC filing) — an insider sale that can prompt some near-term profit-taking despite his continued large ownership. SEC filing: Insider sale disclosure

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several equities analysts have issued reports on WDC shares. Weiss Ratings raised Western Digital from a “hold (c+)” rating to a “buy (b-)” rating in a research note on Monday, February 2nd. Bank of America boosted their target price on Western Digital from $197.00 to $257.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, January 20th. The Goldman Sachs Group set a $250.00 price target on Western Digital in a report on Tuesday, February 3rd. Robert W. Baird set a $310.00 price target on shares of Western Digital in a research report on Monday, February 2nd. Finally, Mizuho raised their price objective on shares of Western Digital to $340.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, February 4th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty have assigned a Buy rating and three have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Western Digital currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $265.58.

Western Digital Stock Up 8.6%

WDC stock opened at $282.58 on Monday. Western Digital Corporation has a 1-year low of $28.83 and a 1-year high of $296.50. The stock has a market cap of $95.81 billion, a P/E ratio of 28.34, a P/E/G ratio of 0.73 and a beta of 1.80. The stock’s fifty day simple moving average is $205.35 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $144.87. The company has a current ratio of 1.46, a quick ratio of 1.19 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34.

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

Western Digital Announces Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, March 18th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, March 5th will be given a $0.125 dividend. This represents a $0.50 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.2%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, March 5th. Western Digital’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 5.02%.

Insider Transactions at Western Digital

In other news, Director Roxanne Oulman sold 1,800 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 25th. The shares were sold at an average price of $154.42, for a total value of $277,956.00. Following the sale, the director owned 3,863 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $596,524.46. The trade was a 31.79% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, CEO Irving Tan sold 20,000 shares of Western Digital stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, February 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $255.44, for a total transaction of $5,108,800.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 623,586 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $159,288,807.84. This represents a 3.11% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Over the last 90 days, insiders sold 70,522 shares of company stock valued at $17,661,708. 0.18% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

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.