Seagate Technology Reports Fiscal First Quarter 2021 Financial Results

[btarunr]

Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX) (the "Company" or "Seagate") today reported financial results for its fiscal first quarter ended October 2, 2020. "Seagate delivered solid September quarter results supported by strong recovery in the video and image applications market and healthy cloud data center demand, which drove double digit year-over-year revenue growth for our mass capacity storage solutions. We see indications for Enterprise demand to improve and we expect this to continue as the broader markets gradually recover, supporting our positive December quarter outlook and reinforcing our revenue expectations for the fiscal year," said Dave Mosley, Seagate's chief executive officer.

"Demand for data continues to explode, even through this current period of market uncertainty. As a leader in mass data management, Seagate is executing a technology roadmap focused on helping customers put their valuable data to work. We are on track to ship our first HAMR drives for revenue in December, which is an important industry milestone to support the growing need for mass capacity storage. We also have introduced CORTX, an open-source, object-storage software, along with Lyve Rack that together offer enterprises a simple, secure and efficient way to manage massive volumes of data. These developments illustrate our confidence in identifying and capturing future growth opportunities, and we are further underscoring the confidence in our strategy and long-term cash generation abilities with a 3% increase in our quarterly dividend and a $3 billion increase to our existing share repurchase authorization."



The Company generated $297 million in cash flow from operations and $186 million in free cash flow during the fiscal first quarter 2021. Seagate maintained a healthy balance sheet and during the fiscal first quarter 2021, the Company paid cash dividends of $167 million and repurchased 1.5 million ordinary shares for $68 million. Cash and cash equivalents totaled $1.7 billion at the end of the quarter. There were 258 million ordinary shares issued and outstanding as of the end of the quarter.

All periods presented exclude share-based compensation from non-GAAP results. For a detailed reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results, see accompanying financial tables.

Seagate has issued a Supplemental Financial Information document, which is available on Seagate's Investor Relations website at investors.seagate.com.

Quarterly Cash Dividend
The Board of Directors of the Company (the "Board") declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.67 per share, which will be payable on January 6, 2021 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on December 23, 2020. The payment of any future quarterly dividends will be at the discretion of the Board and will be dependent upon Seagate's financial position, results of operations, available cash, cash flow, capital requirements, distributable reserves, and other factors deemed relevant by the Board.

Business Outlook
The business outlook for the fiscal second quarter 2021 is based on our current assumptions and expectations; actual results may differ materially, as a result of, among other things, the important factors discussed in the Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements section of this release.

The Company is providing the following guidance for its fiscal second quarter 2021:

• Revenue of $2.55 billion, plus or minus $200 million
• Non-GAAP diluted EPS of $1.10, plus or minus $0.15

Guidance regarding non-GAAP diluted EPS excludes known charges related to amortization of acquired intangible assets of $0.01 per share, estimated share-based compensation expenses of $0.12 per share and restructuring costs of $0.01 per share.

We have not reconciled our non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance for fiscal second quarter 2021 to the most directly comparable GAAP measure because material items that may impact these measures are out of our control and/or cannot be reasonably predicted, including, but not limited to, accelerated depreciation, impairment and other charges related to cost saving efforts, restructuring charges, strategic investment losses or impairment recognized, income tax adjustments on these measures, and other charges or benefits that may arise. The amounts of these measures are not currently available, but may be material to future results. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance for fiscal second quarter 2021 to the corresponding GAAP measures is not available without unreasonable effort. A reconciliation of our historical non-GAAP financial measures to their nearest GAAP equivalent is contained in this release.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Melvis]

People still buy Seagate?

 

[windwhirl]

People still buy Seagate?

Why wouldn't they?

 

[shilka]

Someone still think this is 2010 and Seagate is the worst company on earth but would they still be around if they where so terrible?
Tell me have you actually bought a Seagate product in the last 10 years?

 

[MxPhenom 216]

People still buy Seagate?

Seagate's primary market is not the consumer. It is data centers whose primary customers are those like Google, Dell, Microsoft, Amazon etc.

Consumer market makes up less than 5% of Seagate's sales.

 

[Turmania]

People still buy Seagate?

what`s your beed with them? they supply from consumers to enterprices... sector does not revolve around 2 % of ssd market...

 

[windwhirl]

Seagate's primary market is not the consumer. It is data centers whose primary customers are those like Google, Dell, Microsoft, Amazon etc.

Consumer market makes up less than 5% of Seagate's sales.

what`s your beed with them? they supply from consumers to enterprices... sector does not revolve around 2 % of ssd market...

According to Seagate's own data, their sales mostly revolve around their OEM channel (70%), with distributors and retail taking around 15% each. There are variations every quarter but it mostly revolves around those percentages.

Of their total sales, around 90% is mostly HDDs, with the remaining 10% being SSDs, "Enterprise Data Solutions" (whatever that may be), and everything else.

Seagate - Events

investors.seagate.com

Check Supplemental Information for Q1-2021, page 6

There is probably a lot more interesting tidbits in the transcript but I'm too lazy to read 22 pages

 

[Melvis]

Why wouldn't they?

Only couse they have a very bad rep, and I have had more seagate drives die in the past 20yrs then any other drive.

Someone still think this is 2010 and Seagate is the worst company on earth but would they still be around if they where so terrible?
Tell me have you actually bought a Seagate product in the last 10 years?

I run a computer business so yes? and would know first hand alot more then others, question is do you? and I guess you have had your head still in the sand and havent noticed there rep still isnt much better?

 

[John Naylor]

Why wouldn't they?

Exactly ... the irrelevant Backblaze stuff is still being parrotted years later despite backblaze being solely responsible.

"In short, by its own admission, Backblaze employed consumer-class drives in a high-volume enterprise-class environment that far exceeded the warranty conditions of the HDDs. Backblaze installed consumer drives into a number of revisions of its own internally developed chassis, many of which utilized a rubber band to "reduce the vibration" of a vertically mounted HDD.

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/CSdtiyEncL62EVaq9ghoAQ-970-80.png

The first revision of the pods, pictured above, had no fasteners for securing the drive into the chassis. As shown, a heavy HDD is mounted vertically on top of a thin multiplexer PCB. The SATA connectors are bearing the full weight of the drive, and factoring the vibration of a normal HDD into the non-supported equation creates the almost perfect recipe for device failure.

The Backblaze environment employed more drives per chassis and featured much heavier workloads (both of which accelerate failure rates tremendously) than the vendors designed the client-class HDDs for. This ultimately helped Backblaze save money on their infrastructure. The Seagate 3 TB models failed at a higher rate than other drives during the Backblaze deployment, but in fairness, the Seagate drives were the only models that did not feature RV (Rotational Vibration) sensors that counteract excessive vibration in heavy usage models -- specifically because Seagate did not design the drives for that use case. "

Behardware tracked storage RMAs but stopped a few years ago ... The most important thing here that the average RMA rate for HDs was about 1%. If ya look at the results by model however, you will see that each manufacturers has some superstars and some bombs.

08/2017 (average of last 2 6 month reporting periods)

HGST = 0.975 %
Seagate = 0.825
Toshiba = 0.930
Western = 1.150

09/2016 (average of last 2 6 month reporting periods)
Seagate = 0.705
Toshiba 0.975
Western = 1.035
HGST = 0.865

We stopped using HDs about 8-9 (maybe 10) years ago ... over that time, each build got an SSD (Samsung Pro) and an SSHD (Seagate 2 RB) most builds got 2 of each . Over that time have had (3) SS failures ... 0 SSHD failures.... but no SSD failures in > 5 years They are also used for offsite storage... Tho we have installed Id guess between 120 and 1350 w/ no reported failures ... its too small a sample size

 

[Caring1]

@shilka
Best to proof read your own post before giving lessons on grammar.
Is there a video for where and were?
Its, is It's, and so on.