Western Digital Shares Fall Despite Its AI Storage Case

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) fell about 4% on 15 September even as the company pressed its case that artificial intelligence workloads represent a durable source of hard drive demand.

Coverage of the move attributed the decline to the nature of the disclosure rather than its content. The company's message came in the form of a conference keynote rather than a business event, leaving revenue lines and customer commitments unchanged.

The underlying figures are stronger than the day's trading suggests. Western Digital reported fiscal fourth quarter 2026 revenue of $3.75 billion, up 43.8% year over year, with earnings per share of $3.56 and gross margin of 54.4%. Chief Executive Officer Irving Tan guided fiscal first quarter 2027 revenue to $4.1 billion.

Tan has framed AI driven storage demand as a compounding trend built on continuous inference and agentic workflows rather than a single buildout cycle. The company has disclosed a long term customer agreement running through calendar 2029 and has said it is negotiating further agreements covering 2029, 2030 and 2031.

Western Digital is now a pure play hard drive business following the separation of Sandisk. Its capacity growth currently rests on extending ePMR technology, with 40TB class drives the near term product, while its own HAMR based products are expected in 2027. Seagate, by contrast, is already shipping HAMR drives into hyperscale contracts.

Tech Seller USA stocks enterprise Western Digital and HGST drives, including Ultrastar nearline and SAS models with exact OEM part numbers.