Estate Counselors LLC Purchases Shares of 25,821 Western Digital Corporation $WDC

Estate Counselors LLC acquired a new position in Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) in the third quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor acquired 25,821 shares of the data storage provider’s stock, valued at approximately $3,100,000.

Other institutional investors have also recently modified their holdings of the company. SYM FINANCIAL Corp bought a new position in shares of Western Digital during the 2nd quarter valued at $225,000. Nordea Investment Management AB boosted its position in Western Digital by 9.6% during the second quarter. Nordea Investment Management AB now owns 30,434 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $1,938,000 after buying an additional 2,656 shares during the period. Greenleaf Trust bought a new position in shares of Western Digital during the second quarter valued at about $233,000. Resona Asset Management Co. Ltd. increased its holdings in shares of Western Digital by 7.1% in the second quarter. Resona Asset Management Co. Ltd. now owns 118,888 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $7,594,000 after buying an additional 7,913 shares during the period. Finally, Carnegie Investment Counsel bought a new stake in shares of Western Digital in the 2nd quarter valued at about $358,000. 92.51% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Insider Buying and Selling at Western Digital

In related news, Director Kimberly Alexy sold 1,768 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 25th. The stock was sold at an average price of $154.00, for a total transaction of $272,272.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director owned 3,585 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $552,090. This trade represents a 33.03% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, Director Roxanne Oulman sold 1,800 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, November 25th. The stock was sold at an average price of $154.42, for a total value of $277,956.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director directly owned 3,863 shares in the company, valued at $596,524.46. This trade represents a 31.79% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders have sold a total of 26,816 shares of company stock valued at $4,116,148 over the last ninety days. Company insiders own 0.18% of the company’s stock.

Key Stories Impacting Western Digital

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

• Positive Sentiment: Multiple analyst upgrades and sizable price‑target increases (Citigroup, Rosenblatt, Bank of America and others) have lifted sentiment and supported the rally into record highs. Forget the Chips, Buy Memory
• Positive Sentiment: AI-driven demand is rotating investor money from GPUs to storage — institutional flow into NAND/SSD and HDD suppliers is increasing pricing power and revenue visibility for WDC’s data‑center HDDs and SSD roadmap. AI-money moving to storage
• Positive Sentiment: WDC has strong recent earnings‑surprise history and Wall Street expects continued earnings growth; that raises the chance of another beat at the upcoming quarterly report. Will WDC beat estimates?
• Neutral Sentiment: Corporate cadence: WDC is hosting an Innovation Day and has raised its dividend — both can reinforce the narrative but are event‑driven and dependent on execution/communication. Innovation Day / dividend context
• Neutral Sentiment: Insider activity: a small officer sale (447 shares) was disclosed; size and frequency indicate routine liquidity rather than management signaling. SEC filing
• Negative Sentiment: Price pullback today amid broader market strength — traders appear to be taking profits after WDC hit fresh 52‑week/all‑time highs. WDC stock dips while market gains
• Negative Sentiment: Valuation and cycle risk concerns: several commentators warn the rally could be stretched and exposed to a pullback if supply/pricing dynamics normalize or AI demand growth slows. Pullback risk analysis

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several research firms recently issued reports on WDC. Barclays restated an “overweight” rating and set a $240.00 price target on shares of Western Digital in a research report on Thursday, January 15th. The Goldman Sachs Group restated a “neutral” rating and issued a $165.00 target price on shares of Western Digital in a report on Friday, January 9th. China Renaissance started coverage on shares of Western Digital in a report on Friday, December 5th. They set a “buy” rating and a $193.00 price target for the company. Zacks Research upgraded shares of Western Digital from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Monday, October 13th. Finally, Weiss Ratings reiterated a “hold (c+)” rating on shares of Western Digital in a report on Monday, December 29th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, nineteen have given a Buy rating and five have issued a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $206.29.

Western Digital Trading Down 2.8%

NASDAQ WDC opened at $236.39 on Monday. The firm has a market capitalization of $80.82 billion, a PE ratio of 34.41, a P/E/G ratio of 1.13 and a beta of 1.78. The stock’s 50 day moving average is $182.54 and its 200 day moving average is $130.77. Western Digital Corporation has a twelve month low of $28.83 and a twelve month high of $247.94. The company has a quick ratio of 0.94, a current ratio of 1.21 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.42.

Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, October 30th. The data storage provider reported $1.78 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.57 by $0.21. Western Digital had a return on equity of 30.89% and a net margin of 21.37%.The business had revenue of $2.82 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.72 billion. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $1.78 earnings per share. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 27.4% on a year-over-year basis. Western Digital has set its Q2 2026 guidance at 1.730-2.030 EPS. Research analysts forecast that Western Digital Corporation will post 4.89 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Western Digital Increases Dividend

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, December 18th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, December 4th were paid a dividend of $0.125 per share. This is a positive change from Western Digital’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.10. This represents a $0.50 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.2%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, December 4th. Western Digital’s payout ratio is 7.28%.

Western Digital Profile

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.