Western Digital
WDCMarket price data through August 20, 2026.
Performance
Aug 2021 – Aug 2026
Track record
How this pick has done since Benson first called it.
- Benson Return
- +21%
- How much this stock is up since Benson first picked it — measured from the price at the time of that first pick, not from today.
- First pick price
- ~$389
- Roughly what one share cost when Benson first picked this stock. This is the starting line for the Benson Return.
- Tracking since
- April 2026
- The month this stock first became a Benson pick.
- Tracking duration
- 3 months
- How long Benson has been tracking this pick.
About Western Digital
Western Digital makes the hard drives that store the world's data. After spinning off its flash memory business, it is a pure play on the giant high capacity drives that fill cloud and AI data centers. Think of it as the company that builds the filing cabinets where everything artificial intelligence creates gets parked.
The case for and against
Both sides of the story, in plain English.
- Margins Melting Up
Revenue hit 3.75 billion dollars last quarter, up 44% from a year ago, and gross margin climbed to 54.1% from 41% a year earlier. Profit per share more than doubled. For the full year, revenue reached 12.9 billion dollars and operating profit nearly doubled to 4.45 billion dollars.
- Cash Machine
The company pulled in 1.39 billion dollars from operations in just three months and kept 1.28 billion of it as free cash flow. It is also paying a 15 cent quarterly dividend. Management guided next quarter to about 4.1 billion dollars in revenue, another 42% to 49% jump.
- Priced Perfectly
The stock has run up enormously over the past year, and expectations now assume margins keep expanding past 55%. When a business is already growing sales 44% and earning 44 cents of operating profit on every dollar, there is very little room left for good news to surprise anyone.
- Cloud Dependence
Most of the demand comes from a handful of giant cloud and data center customers. If those buyers slow their spending even slightly, revenue growth could fall from 44% to flat in a hurry. Storage has always been a boom and bust business, and this is a very big boom.
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How to read this page
This automated research summary uses Financial Modeling Prep market data through 2026-08-20. Model signals, scores, and risk labels can change and may be incomplete or wrong.
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