According to this post WD gained $1.2 billion market cap last week. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/institutional-investors-western-digital-corporations-160330153.html Thoughts??
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https://www.fitchratings.com/research/corporate-finance/fitch-downgrades-western-digital-lt-idr-to-bb-places-on-rating-watch-negative-08-11-2023#:~:text=Meanwhile%2C%20Fitch%20does%20not%20anticipate,%247.7%20billion%20of%20total%20debt.
However, Fitch believes that activist investor, Elliott Capital Management's, stake in Western Digital supports the case for a long-term capital structure more in-line with direct HDD competitor, Seagate Technology plc (BB+/Negative). Meanwhile, Fitch does not anticipate that the Flash business will support an aggressive capital structure or meaningful capital returns, likely saddling the HDD business with the bulk of Western Digital's $7.7 billion of total debt.
We the few and the not so proud at Seagate do have an activist investor. Heavy D put the hedge fund guy on our F-ing board mainly because he is smart like that. That is the only reason we are still borrowing money to pay dividends. One thing for sure, both of our Executive Teams are way overpaid. Best of luck in the new year to all the people who do the actual work.
Yes, activist investors don't join boards because everything is going well. Despite what DG said, the bottom line is WD was underperforming and DG never took the next steps to make them successful. Instead, he hired storage novices to run them and the rest is history as the ELT just lined their pockets while doing nothing to either streamline or grow the company. In May of 2022, Elliott said if they split the company by the end of 2023 the stock would be at $100. Well, 18 months later we now know that DG made them look like fools, and if the BoD doesn't finally get rid of him AND ALL THE PEOPLE HE DIRECTLY HIRED they're just as foolish.
@fnmp+1q4N6eJQ as if having an SSD business added great value as it prepares to spin off; they didn’t stop their dividend to reinvest in the business only to find themselves with an activist investor all over them. Seems close to even heading in 2024
The Seagate bots are posting here again. Their stock is up, they pay dividends, their execs are dumping it while it’s hot… they have more than $5B in debt and still no SSD companies to support nor actual HAMR products to show other than the ones in the fail-safe proof box they created to hide the new levels of MTBF they’re customers will see in the near future.
still lagging STX
Our stock is now very close to $52. Are the good times coming back??
a long way to go and won’t recover the billions in lost value
when we surpass C-gate stick price post
Cool