Western Digital Reports Fiscal First Quarter 2022 Financial Results

Controller Master


Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today reported fiscal first quarter 2022 financial results. “Strong demand across diverse end markets, particularly for our cloud products, combined with Western Digital’s strong innovation engine, broad routes to market and sharpened execution, enabled us to deliver solid results within our guidance range, even in the face of significant COVID impacts and supply chain disruptions,” said David Goeckeler, Western Digital CEO. “While these disruptions are transitory, the long-term opportunities for Western Digital remain unchanged as the world’s digital transformation continues to accelerate. We believe that the migration to the cloud and demand for storage solutions throughout the client and consumer markets will continue to drive a huge opportunity for Western Digital and our customers.”

The company generated $521 million in cash flow from operations, made a total debt repayment of $213 million, and ended the quarter with $3.3 billion of total cash and cash equivalents. Average shares outstanding were 316 million for the quarter. In addition, as a result of strong financial results and free cash flow generation, on October 22, 2021, the company fully repaid the remaining balance of Term Loan B in an amount of $943 million, bringing total gross debt outstanding to $7.7 billion.

New End Market Summary
In the fiscal first quarter of 2022, Western Digital refined the end-markets we report to be Cloud (primarily products for public or private cloud environments), Client (primarily products sold directly to OEMs or via distribution), and Consumer (primarily retail and other end-user products).

Cloud represented a record 44% of total revenue, led by record capacity enterprise hard drive revenue and nearly 30% sequential growth in enterprise SSD revenue. During the quarter, Western Digital announced OptiNAND, a revolutionary technology that utilizes flash in the HDD control plane to further increase areal density with industry proven PMR technology. Next month, the company will begin volume shipments of its 20 terabyte CMR hard drives utilizing OptiNAND technology. Within enterprise SSDs, the company experienced continued success in the cloud with another successful quarter of qualifications.

In Client, the flash business unit experienced growth- specifically in mobile, gaming, automotive, IOT and industrial applications. Western Digital’s strength in this end market was more than offset by pressure in desktop and notebook hard drives due to supply disruptions at our customers and within the company’s own operations.

In Summary

  • In Consumer, revenue from both the flash and hard drive business units declined on a sequential basis due to supply disruptions, in addition to uneven geographic demand due to COVID lockdowns.
  • First quarter revenue was $5.1 billion, up 29% year-over-year (YoY). Cloud revenue increased 72%, Client revenue increased 6%, and Consumer revenue increased 10% YoY.
  • First quarter GAAP earnings per share (EPS) was $1.93 and non-GAAP EPS was $2.49. Non-GAAP EPS included $56 million in COVID-related expenses.
  • Generated operating cash flow of $521 million and free cash flow of $224 million.
  • On October 22, 2021, repaid remaining Term-Loan B balance of $943 million.
  • Expecting fiscal second quarter 2022 revenue to be in the range of $4.70 billion to $4.90 billion with non-GAAP EPS in the range of $1.95 to $2.25