Courtesy of Benzinga.
Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) released its fourth quarter earnings on Wednesday. Shares of the company are down 1.1 percent.
Below are some key highlights from its conference call:
Growth:
• Western Digital achieved strong financial results in the June quarter, with better-than-anticipated revenue
• Healthy gross margin performance and continued strong cash flow generation
• We achieved these results by addressing continued robust demand in gaming.
• We also saw strength in our performance enterprise business.
• Longer-term, we remain excited about Western Digital's strong strategic position at the center of the storage ecosystem
• Collectively, these developments highlight our broad-based participation in the growth of data.
• Combined with our ongoing investments, I'm confident of Western Digital's future as a leading technology company and storage solutions provider.
• Revenue for fiscal year 2014 was $15.1 billion, including $509 million from enterprise SSD, which represented a 43 percent increase from fiscal year 2013.
• We continue to make progress on our journey towards a more diversified revenue mix.
• 53% of our revenue coming from our branded, consumer electronics and enterprise HDD and SSD businesses.
• Our revenue for the June quarter was $3.7 billion.
• Over the long-term, we continue to expect that our SSD revenue growth will outpace the growth rate of the total enterprise SSD space.
• We shipped a total of 63.1 million hard drives at an average selling price of $56.
• Our gross margin for the quarter was 28.2 percent.
• Our net income for the June quarter totaled $317 million, or $1.32 per share.
• We repurchased 3.2 million shares for $272 million during the June quarter.
• For fiscal year 2014, we repurchased 10.3 million shares for $816 million.
• We also declared a dividend in the amount of $0.40 per share. In total, we paid dividends of $259 million during fiscal year 2014.
• We repurchased 3.2 million shares for $272 million during the June quarter. For fiscal year 2014, we repurchased 10.3 million shares for $816 million.
• We exited Q4 with total cash and cash equivalents of $4.8 billion, of which approximately $1.4 billion was in the U.S.
Guidance:
• We expect revenue to be in a range of $3.8 billion to $3.9 billion.
• Share count of approximately 241 million.
• Accordingly, we estimate non-GAAP earnings per share of between $1.95 and $2.05 for the September quarter.
• As a reminder, we expect the sTec, VeloBit and Virident acquisitions to be accretive early in calendar year 2015.
