Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) Receives $262.25 Average Price Target from Brokerages

Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) has received a consensus recommendation of “Moderate Buy” from the twenty-four brokerages that are covering the firm, Marketbeat.com reports. Three analysts have rated the stock with a hold recommendation, twenty have issued a buy recommendation and one has assigned a strong buy recommendation to the company. The average twelve-month price objective among brokers that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $265.5833.

A number of brokerages recently commented on WDC. UBS Group set a $306.00 price target on Western Digital in a research note on Friday, January 30th. Rosenblatt Securities reiterated a “buy” rating and set a $340.00 target price on shares of Western Digital in a research report on Wednesday, February 4th. Morgan Stanley raised their target price on shares of Western Digital from $260.00 to $306.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Friday, January 30th. The Goldman Sachs Group set a $250.00 price target on shares of Western Digital in a research note on Tuesday, February 3rd. Finally, China Renaissance started coverage on shares of Western Digital in a research report on Friday, December 5th. They set a “buy” rating and a $193.00 price objective for the company.

Insider Activity at Western Digital

In related news, Director Kimberly Alexy sold 1,768 shares of the stock in a transaction 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 sale, the director owned 3,585 shares in the company, valued at approximately $552,090. This represents a 33.03% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Irving Tan sold 20,000 shares of Western Digital stock in a transaction on Monday, February 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $255.44, for a total transaction of $5,108,800.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 623,586 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $159,288,807.84. The trade was a 3.11% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders sold a total of 70,522 shares of company stock valued at $17,661,708 over the last ninety days. 0.18% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Western Digital

Several hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of WDC. Quadcap Wealth Management LLC grew its holdings in Western Digital by 2.1% during the 4th quarter. Quadcap Wealth Management LLC now owns 2,007 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $346,000 after acquiring an additional 41 shares in the last quarter. Moss Adams Wealth Advisors LLC lifted its position in shares of Western Digital by 2.6% in the 4th quarter. Moss Adams Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 1,982 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $341,000 after purchasing an additional 51 shares during the period. Bogart Wealth LLC boosted its stake in shares of Western Digital by 19.4% during the fourth quarter. Bogart Wealth LLC now owns 369 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $64,000 after purchasing an additional 60 shares in the last quarter. 44 Wealth Management LLC increased its holdings in Western Digital by 0.8% during the third quarter. 44 Wealth Management LLC now owns 9,329 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $1,120,000 after buying an additional 78 shares during the period. Finally, Addison Advisors LLC raised its stake in Western Digital by 7.1% in the third quarter. Addison Advisors LLC now owns 1,281 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $154,000 after buying an additional 85 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 92.51% of the company’s stock.

Western Digital Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ:WDC opened at $282.58 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $95.81 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 28.34, a P/E/G ratio of 0.73 and a beta of 1.80. The firm has a fifty day moving average price of $205.35 and a 200 day moving average price of $144.87. Western Digital has a fifty-two week low of $28.83 and a fifty-two week high of $296.50. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34, a quick ratio of 1.19 and a current ratio of 1.46.

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

Western Digital Announces Dividend

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

Key Western Digital News

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

Western Digital Company 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.