SPC Financial Inc. Buys New Stake in Western Digital Corporation $WDC

SPC Financial Inc. purchased a new position in Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) in the 3rd quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor purchased 1,869 shares of the data storage provider’s stock, valued at approximately $224,000.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. SYM FINANCIAL Corp bought a new stake in shares of Western Digital during the second quarter valued at approximately $225,000. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. lifted its holdings in Western Digital by 12.3% during 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 buying an additional 5,731 shares in the last quarter. LBP AM SA acquired a new position in Western Digital during the 3rd quarter worth $641,000. Nordea Investment Management AB boosted its position in Western Digital by 9.6% in 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 buying an additional 2,656 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Callan Family Office LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Western Digital in the 2nd quarter valued at $919,000. Institutional investors own 92.51% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of research firms have recently weighed in on WDC. UBS Group set a $306.00 target price on Western Digital in a research report on Friday, January 30th. Zacks Research upgraded Western Digital from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Monday, October 13th. Wall Street Zen raised Western Digital from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, January 31st. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their target price on shares of Western Digital from $94.00 to $175.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Friday, October 31st. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group set a $250.00 price target on shares of Western Digital in a research report on Tuesday, February 3rd. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty have issued a Buy rating and three have given a Hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Western Digital currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $265.58.

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

Insider Transactions at Western Digital

In other news, CEO Irving Tan sold 20,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, February 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $255.44, for a total value of $5,108,800.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 623,586 shares in the company, valued at $159,288,807.84. This represents a 3.11% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, Director Matthew E. Massengill sold 36,926 shares of the stock in a transaction on Thursday, February 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $260.43, for a total transaction of $9,616,638.18. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. In the last 90 days, insiders have sold 70,522 shares of company stock valued at $17,661,708. 0.18% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Western Digital Stock Performance

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 company has a current ratio of 1.46, a quick ratio of 1.19 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34. The firm has a market cap of $95.81 billion, a PE ratio of 28.34, a P/E/G ratio of 0.73 and a beta of 1.80. The business’s 50-day moving average price is $205.35 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $144.87.

Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, January 29th. The data storage provider reported $2.13 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.93 by $0.20. Western Digital had a return on equity of 41.53% and a net margin of 35.52%.The company had revenue of $3.02 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.93 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $1.77 earnings per share. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 25.2% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, research analysts forecast that Western Digital Corporation will post 4.89 earnings per share for the current year.

Western Digital Dividend Announcement

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

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.