Western Digital Investor Day: HAMR Roadmap, AI Data Center Shift, and New $4B Buyback Plan

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Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) executives outlined an accelerated exertion roadmap and an updated semipermanent fiscal exemplary astatine a New York capitalist event, emphasizing that the institution is progressively centered connected information halfway request tied to unreality and artificial quality workloads. CEO Irving Tan, Chief Product Officer Ahmed Shihab, and CFO Kris Sennesael highlighted advancement connected lawsuit engagement, high-capacity thrust ramps, and caller show and power-efficiency initiatives, portion reiterating a committedness to returning escaped currency travel to shareholders.

Tan said the institution has spent the past 12 months executing against the six strategical pillars it presented astatine its February 2025 Investor Day, including reorganizing sales, engineering, and merchandise absorption teams to amended prosecute customers. He said those efforts person translated into semipermanent agreements with customers extending done calendar 2027 and 1 extending done 2028.

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Tan besides pointed to the company’s caller summation to the Nasdaq-100 (in December) and the motorboat of a caller WD marque and logo, which helium said reflects a translation toward being “data-centric” and focused connected information centers astatine the halfway of AI and cloud. He argued that retention request is being propelled not lone by AI exemplary training, but besides by inference, which generates further information that indispensable beryllium stored, on with emerging AI-driven applications similar autonomous vehicles and robotics.

Tan said WD expects retention exabyte request to turn astatine a CAGR of “25% plus” implicit the adjacent 5 years and asserted that HDDs volition correspond 80% of retention media deployed successful hyperscale environments owed to economics and evolving show capabilities.

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Shihab framed WD’s merchandise strategy astir what helium said customers consistently request: capableness astatine scale, reliability, outgo efficiency, creaseless exertion transitions without bundle disruption, amended performance, and improved powerfulness efficiency. He described AI retention arsenic a tiered “library,” with HDDs representing astir 80% of the unreality retention stack based connected WD’s experience.

On capacity, Shihab highlighted accelerated ramps of high-capacity drives and said the company’s HAMR drives are already “in our customers’ hands” for qualification. He said WD announced 1 lawsuit qualifying HAMR drives the anterior week and stated astatine the lawsuit that WD present has a 2nd lawsuit qualifying HAMR.