Western Digital Corp (NASDAQ:WDC) recently announced it is extending the breadth and depth of its data center portfolio into the rapidly evolving in-memory computing market segment. The stock has already suffered a massive decline in 2018, falling by nearly 60%. With the fast money already well-wrung out of the memory space, this type of move could have some lasting resonance in the market.
According to that release, the new Ultrastar DC ME200 Memory Extension Drive is the company’s first product that enables customers to better optimize in-memory system capacity/performance for running demanding applications that drive today’s real-time analytics and business insights.
Western Digital Corp (NASDAQ:WDC) frames itself as a company that develops, manufactures, and sells data storage devices and solutions worldwide.
It offers client devices, including hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs) for computing devices, such as desktop and notebook PCs, security surveillance systems, gaming consoles, and set top boxes; flash-based embedded storage products for mobile phones, tablets, notebook PCs, and other portable and wearable devices, as well as automotive, IoT, industrial, and connected home applications; flash-based memory wafers; and embedded storage solutions and iNAND embedded flash products, such as multi-chip package solutions.
The company also provides data center devices and solutions comprising enterprise helium hard drives; enterprise SSDs consisting of flash-based SSDs and software solutions for use in enterprise servers, online transactions, data analysis, and other enterprise applications; data center solutions, including HDDs and drive configurations for use in data storage systems and tiered storage models; system solutions that offer petabyte scalable capacity; and data storage platforms and systems.
In addition, it offers client solution, such as external HDD storage products in mobile and desktop form; client SSDs; removable cards used in consumer devices comprising mobile phones, tablets, imaging systems, still cameras, action video cameras, and security surveillance systems; universal serial bus flash drives used in the computing and consumer markets; and wireless drive products for in-field back up of created content, as well as wireless streaming of high-definition movies, photos, music and documents to tablets, smartphones, and personal computers (PCs).
The company sells its products under the HGST, SanDisk, and WD brands to original equipment manufacturers, distributors, resellers, cloud infrastructure players, and retailers. Western Digital Corporation was founded in 1970 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.
A Turn-Around in the Making?
As noted above, WDC recently announced it is extending the breadth and depth of its data center portfolio into the rapidly evolving in-memory computing market segment.
Even with that news, the action hasn’t really heated up in the stock, with shares moving net sideways over the past week.
“Today’s requirement for faster analytics, data processing, cloud services and high-performance computing (HPC) is increasing demand for in-memory computing across a variety of industries, including healthcare, telecommunications and IT, and retail,” said Ashish Nadkarni, group vice president, IDC. “By expanding in-memory capacity, the Ultrastar memory drive helps alleviate the high cost of adding extra DRAM, as well as addresses the physical limitations of available DIMM slots, where scaling is either cost-prohibitive or nearly impossible.”
Western Digital Corp (NASDAQ:WDC) managed to rope in revenues totaling $5B in overall sales during the company’s most recently reported quarterly financial data — a figure that represents a rate of top line growth of -3%, as compared to year-ago data in comparable terms.
In addition, the company has a strong balance sheet, with cash levels far exceeding current liabilities ($4.7B against $4.4B).