4-Star Stocks Poised to Pop: Western Digital
Based on the aggregated intelligence of 180,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, disk drive specialist Western Digital (NAS: WDC) has earned a respected four-star ranking.
With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Western Digital's business and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.
Western Digital facts
Headquarters (founded) | Irvine, Calif. (1970) |
Market Cap | $7.9 billion |
Industry | Computer storage and peripherals |
Trailing-12-Month Revenue | $10.1 billion |
Management | CEO John Coyne (since 2007) |
Return on Equity (average, past 3 years) | 22.9% |
Cash/Debt | $3.4 billion / $2.7 billion |
Competitors | EMC |
Sources: S&P Capital IQ and Motley Fool CAPS.
On CAPS, 94% of the 1,360 members who have rated Western Digital believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward.
Earlier this month, one of those Fools, Murkyl, addressed some of the uncertainty weighing on the stock:
There is also a lot of talk about solid state drives overtaking hard disk storage. ... What some people don't get is that even with tablets and the cloud, hard disk usage actually goes up. All that cloud storage has to go somewhere and hard disks are still the only viable cost effective solution and barring any radical breakthrough, will continue to be so for at least 5-10 years. ... Another point about hard disks is that even with lower unit counts to the PC space, what matters a lot [is] the enterprise space where disk margins are much better. ... I believe the purchase of Hitachi's disk division was a brilliant move that will help [Western Digital's] margins in the coming quarters.
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At the time thisarticle was published Fool contributor Brian Pacampara owns no position in any of the companies mentioned. The Fool owns shares of Western Digital. The Fool owns shares of EMC. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Fool's disclosure policy always gets a perfect score.
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