WD merger with SanDisk was a total failure: the market of the combined company dropped while Micron raised.
Would a merge with kioxia be beneficial or just another failure as above?
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I think no merger will happen. Is all in the news.
NO
As long as the western tech companies are still the storage leader, hdd will be fine. I read that China has master plan to retire or phase out hdd completely once they are self sufficient through domestic tech co, i guess that will be ymtc.
: @1sne+1pf9KJ8G use cases are fine, but even Elliott’s thesis is that the current company configuration has not unlocked the potential. There may be miro successes, but macro success proved elusive. As for AI, that’s hasn’t proven out to be a tailwind yet bc we know AI servers use 6-8x more DRAM, and some additional NAND.
@1ayn+1pf9KJ8G
While in some cases NAND/SSD is a replacement of HDD, there are many use cases where they are compliment and/or addition. With profileration of AI and other use cases, the demand for NAND will continue to be strong.
@1tqk+1pf9KJ8G failure is that WD ended up in a position, regardless of market conditions, to divest from the SanDisk acquisition. By all accounts, enterprise flash failed to deliver on exceptions or gain meaningful market share. The assumption that enterprise flash would disrupt the dominance of hdd in the data proved incorrect.
Not sure what OP meant by total failure, but the recent downturn is not unique to WD. It's industry wide problem.
With merger we'll have consolidated NAND manufacturing and supply, and on top of that our SSD portfolios are compliment of each other.
Yes, unfortunately there'll be lots of people lose their jobs, me probably included. But from business POV, the merger makes sense.
once the executive leadership positions and Board composition are announced, there is more information to offer opinion
My understanding is that after the WD/Kioxia merger goes through, there is a high probably Micron will acquire the combined company. There is a lot of geopolitics involved and Intel, Micron and WD are key suppliers of the US military and we-pons. The chips act gives US semiconductor companies money to expand supply and given we are effectively in a war with China on semiconductors, there will be moves by multiple US companies to acquire Japanese counterparts. I think at some point there will be a world war soon. We are entering a permanent era of uncertainty that will affect everyone.
it depends on the definition of successful
The worst CEO of the country won’t lead to a successful merger. WD is losing market share in Flash. The Japanese don’t have a good track record either
Per my understanding, Wd is not merging , Wd is selling off the flash BU or ex sandisk. The acquirer is Kioxia, they will own the current debt obligations and repayment responsibilities, WD gets shares in return for all the equipment ex sandisk and wd paid or invested over the years.
It depends on who will run the show. Anybody from WD and it's a fail.