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Sentiment · FY2026 Q3
What companies say about each other on earnings calls — extracted verbatim from public transcripts. Mentions from the newest quarter are a Pro feature.
“I asked Seagate just on what they think on $100 billion of AI spend you would see from a benefit to their business.”
Analyst compares Western Digital to peer Seagate on the share of AI CapEx flowing to HDDs, framing both as the HDD oligopoly.
“So, as like assuming Seagate continues to progress with HAMR and you guys continue to progress over the next, call it, 24 months with your legacy tech, kind of pre-getting to HAMR volume just as for the Analyst Day.”
An analyst frames Seagate as pursuing a competing HAMR technology roadmap in parallel with Western Digital, raising questions about future data-center storage architecture and compatibility as both suppliers transition capacity technologies.
“So Seagate has given us some framework for where they think their capacity kind of hits a wall on the HDD side that's about 160 exabytes on a quarterly basis. You guys have kind of gotten, I believe in this last quarter to around 175 exabytes.”
An analyst cites Seagate's disclosed framework for where its HDD capacity hits a wall (about 160 exabytes/quarter) and compares it to Western Digital's roughly 175 exabytes shipped last quarter, probing where WD's own capacity ceiling sits.
“It is one thing when you and Seagate had excess capacity, but it seems like you really can't ship much if any more than the 13.5 million drives you're shipping and now passing above this 10 year trend line.”
An analyst notes that unlike earlier periods when Western Digital and Seagate both carried excess HDD manufacturing capacity, WD now appears to be shipping near its practical ceiling, above its 10-year trend line.
“they see pricing going higher. They see you and Seagate talking about not adding capacity.”
An analyst probed whether hard-drive customers might place shadow orders given both Western Digital and Seagate signaling capacity discipline amid rising pricing.
“Video applications continue to drive significant demand for hard drives with platforms like YouTube witnessing 20 million video uploads daily, up from just 2 million 3 years ago.”
Seagate cites YouTube's 10x growth in daily video uploads as a driver of mass-capacity hard drive demand, a read-through for Alphabet's video platform storage footprint.
“We are pleased that our strong execution is being recognized with S&P upgrading our credit rating earlier this month.”
S&P Global Ratings upgraded Seagate's credit rating, a read-through on improving issuer credit quality in the HDD space.
“And I would say TDK is a great partner, has been for a long time. We talked to them about technology all the time, but they don't have HAMR technology.”
Seagate describes TDK as a long-standing head-supply partner but notes TDK does not have HAMR technology, underscoring Seagate's in-house HAMR advantage.
“Google reports over 275 million videos were generated on its Veo platform within the first 5 months.”
Seagate cites Google's Veo AI video platform generating hundreds of millions of videos as evidence of the unstructured-data explosion driving demand for high-capacity nearline hard drives.
“Meta had a white paper out, I think, in the last 90-days, which got a lot of attention in terms of how QLC could be used almost as a new storage medium between traditional flash and nearline.”
An analyst raises Meta's QLC-NAND white paper as a potential substitution risk to nearline hard drive demand; Seagate's CEO downplays it as a niche, read-intensive use case that doesn't threaten the broader HDD/NAND blend in cloud storage.
“Reinforcing this approach, Google recently unveiled details about their foundational Colossus storage system, highlighting the use of SSDs for fast data access, while depending on hard drives for mass storage and data retention needs due to their scalability and cost benefits.”
Seagate cites Google's public disclosure of its Colossus storage architecture as validation that large cloud customers continue to rely on hard drives for mass capacity storage even as AI workloads grow.
“It looks like Meta is really the big driver today, but curious if you've sized it at all and how you think about the incremental demand to your overall business.”
An analyst flags Meta as a leading driver of the AI-generated imagery and video demand that Seagate says is expanding mass-capacity storage needs.
“AWS highlighted at their recent re:Invent conference that adopting the highest capacity hard disk drives allows their storage system architecture to lower costs, conserve floor space, and reduce power consumption.”
Seagate cites AWS's public comments on the cost, space and power benefits of high-capacity HDDs as validation of its areal-density product roadmap for cloud customers.
Record-breaking financial performance continued with revenue of $2.83 billion up 22% and non-GAAP EPS of $3.11 as gross margin expanded to 42.2%, up 210 basis points sequentially. HAMR Mozaic was qualified with all major US CSPs and nearline capacity was fully allocated through calendar 2026 while free cash flow reached the highest level in eight years. Data center reached 87% of shipment volume as agentic AI and video generation created new storage demand categories, with pricing strategy sustaining flat to positive revenue per terabyte.
Demand | Product Launch | Margin | Pricing | Revenue Growth | Supply Chain | Competitive Dynamics | Innovation & R&D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025Q2 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 4 |
| 2025Q3 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| 2025Q4 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 | ||
| 2026Q1 | 9 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 |
| 2026Q2 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 2026Q3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| '25Q2 | '25Q3 | '25Q4 | '26Q1 | '26Q2 | '26Q3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demand | 4 | 5 | 5 | 9 | 3 | 4 |
| Product Launch | 5 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 3 |
| Margin | 5 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 7 | 3 |
| Pricing | 1 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 6 |
| Revenue Growth | 3 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Supply Chain | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | |
| Competitive Dynamics | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| Innovation & R&D | 4 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Analyst | Firm | Questions (Challenge)Percentage of questions scored as challenging — where the analyst pushed back, pressed for specifics, or questioned management's assumptions. |
|---|---|---|
| Wamsi Mohan | Bank of America | 7 (14%) |
| Amit Daryanani | Evercore ISI | 6 (0%) |
| Erik Woodring | Morgan Stanley |
| Tim Arcuri | UBS | 6 (17%) |
| CJ Muse | Cantor Fitzgerald | 6 (17%) |
| Vijay Rakesh | Mizuho Securities | 6 (0%) |
| Asiya Merchant | Citigroup | 6 (0%) |
| Ananda Baruah | Loop Capital | 6 (0%) |
| Steve Fox | Fox Advisors | 5 (0%) |
| Aaron Rakers | Wells Fargo | 5 (0%) |
| Firm | Analysts | Questions (Challenge)Percentage of questions scored as challenging — where the analyst pushed back, pressed for specifics, or questioned management's assumptions. |
|---|---|---|
| Bank of America | 1 | 7 (14%) |
| TD Cowen | 3 | 7 (0%) |
| Morgan Stanley | 1 | 6 (17%) |
| Loop Capital | 1 | 6 (0%) |
| Cantor Fitzgerald | 1 | 6 (17%) |
| Citigroup | 1 | 6 (0%) |
| Evercore ISI | 1 | 6 (0%) |
| Mizuho Securities | 1 | 6 (0%) |
| Company | Score | Trend | Rev YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
STX Seagate Technology Holdings | 10 | +44.1% | |
| ANET Arista Networks | 9 | +35.1% | |
| DELL Dell Technologies | 9 | +87.5% | |
| HPQ HP Inc. | 6 | +9.0% | |
| NTAP NetApp | 9 | +12.5% | |
| SMCI Supermicro | 7 | +122.7% | |
| WDC Western Digital | 9 | +45.5% |