Western Digital (WDC)
Forward P/E is 13.19x against a peer median of 13.54x, a ratio of 0.97x — inside the fairly priced band — with trailing P/E 14.78x and PEG 0.17, while latest-quarter revenue grew +55.5% year over year (PRIMARY, SEC filings/EDGAR) against a technology hardware and storage cluster median of +48.5%. The very low forward P/E is NOT taken as undervalued: this is the low-P/E trap test case, because a 13.19x multiple on hard-disk and memory-cycle earnings that are currently surging (+55.5% revenue) is most likely a multiple on peak-cycle earnings, and price/sales of 9.84x is high for storage hardware. The label is therefore capped at fairly priced.
What would change this label: Moves toward OVERVALUED if storage pricing and earnings normalise so that the forward P/E rises above about 15.6x (1.15x the current peer median) on falling estimates, or if revenue growth turns negative year over year; a move to UNDERVALUED would require the low forward multiple to survive a full down-cycle in earnings — that is, forward P/E still at or below about 12.2x (0.90x the peer median) after peak earnings have washed out.
Western Digital's shares cost about 13 times next year's expected earnings, about the same as similar storage companies, and sales grew about 56% in the latest quarter. That low price might look like a bargain, but profits in disk drives swing sharply up and down, and right now they are swinging up. If profits fall back to normal, the shares will look much more expensive, so we call the price fair rather than cheap.
Both lines start at 100 on 2020-09-01. Over the full window Western Digital returned +1232.09% and the S&P 500 +118.28% (price returns; dividends not reinvested). Worst peak-to-trough fall for Western Digital: -60.9% (2021-06-04 to 2022-12-28). Source: Nasdaq official daily history.
What the label rests on
Forward P/E is 13.19x against a peer median of 13.54x, a ratio of 0.97x — inside the fairly priced band — with trailing P/E 14.78x and PEG 0.17, while latest-quarter revenue grew +55.5% year over year (PRIMARY, SEC filings/EDGAR) against a technology hardware and storage cluster median of +48.5%. The very low forward P/E is NOT taken as undervalued: this is the low-P/E trap test case, because a 13.19x multiple on hard-disk and memory-cycle earnings that are currently surging (+55.5% revenue) is most likely a multiple on peak-cycle earnings, and price/sales of 9.84x is high for storage hardware. The label is therefore capped at fairly priced. The company’s forward P/E is 13.2× against a peer median of 13.5×. Its own history: UNVERIFIED — no sourced range available. Sector demand read: Delivered demand check: the Technology hardware & storage group's median latest-quarter revenue growth was 48.5% year over year (SEC filings) — demand rising. Latest-quarter sales growth was +55.5% versus a year earlier (SEC filings).
| Company | Price (Oct 27, 2026) | Forward P/E | Trailing P/E |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western Digital (WDC) | $380.88 | 13.2× | 14.8× |
| STX | $629.00 | 13.5× | 33.0× |
| SNDK | $1,304.84 | 6.1× | 17.7× |
| HPE | $60.47 | 13.1× | 30.8× |
| P | $138.14 | 42.9× | 191.3× |
| NTAP | $227.04 | 22.8× | 32.0× |
| Peer median | 13.5× |
Multiples: stockanalysis.com (SECONDARY, S&P Global data), fetched Oct 28, 2026. Peer set chosen by sector; the median is the middle value of the set. The label and its numbers were recorded in the programme’s label registry on Oct 28, 2026 and will be scored at 6 and 12 months.
Sales, profit and cash
Gross margin = gross profit divided by sales, from SEC filings.
Free cash flow = cash from operations minus spending on plant and equipment, both from the company’s SEC cash-flow statement. Gaps are quarters where that spending line is not separately tagged in the filings — shown as gaps, never estimated.
| Quarter | Sales | Gross margin | Net income | EPS (GAAP, diluted) | Free cash flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q/E Oct 2026 2026-10-02 | $4.4B | 57.8% | $1.8B | 4.63 | $1.4B |
| Q/E Jul 2026 2026-07-03 | $3.7B | 54.1% | $3.2B | — | $1.3B |
| Q/E Apr 2026 2026-04-03 | $3.3B | 50.2% | $3.2B | 8.20 | $978M |
| Q/E Jan 2026 2026-01-02 | $3.0B | 45.7% | $1.8B | 4.73 | $653M |
| Q/E Oct 2025 2025-10-03 | $2.8B | 43.5% | $1.2B | 3.07 | $599M |
| Q/E Jun 2025 2025-06-27 | $2.6B | 41.0% | $282M | 0.75 | $675M |
| Q/E Mar 2025 2025-03-28 | $2.3B | 39.8% | $520M | 1.42 | $379M |
| Q/E Dec 2024 2024-12-27 | $4.3B | 35.4% | $594M | 1.63 | $287M |
| Q/E Sep 2024 2024-09-27 | $4.1B | 37.9% | $493M | 1.35 | $-62M |
| Q/E Jun 2024 2024-06-28 | $2.0B | 34.8% | $39M | 0.08 | $250M |
| Q/E Mar 2024 2024-03-29 | $3.5B | 29.0% | $135M | 0.34 | $-39M |
| Q/E Dec 2023 2023-12-29 | $3.0B | 16.2% | $-287M | -0.93 | $-242M |
The last twelve reported quarters. Full 25-quarter history sits in the data pack behind this page. A dash means the figure is not tagged as a standalone quarter in the company’s SEC facts (the usual case is the fourth quarter, which many companies only report inside the full-year filing) — it is missing, not zero.
Earnings: getting better or worse?
Each box is one quarter’s earnings per share (EPS). Green means EPS was higher than the same quarter a year earlier; red means lower; a dash means the figure is not tagged in the filings.
Basis: GAAP diluted EPS from SEC company facts, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.
Key facts
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Company (legal name in filings) | WESTERN DIGITAL CORP |
| Chief executive | Irving Tan (source: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/22/wdc-wdc-q1-2027-earnings-call-transcript/) |
| Sector | Technology — Technology Hardware, Storage & Peripherals — sells hard disk drives and data storage products |
| Share price (Oct 27, 2026) | $380.88 |
| Market value (market cap) | $142.6B — share price times shares outstanding of 374,323,269 (SEC filings; SEC EDGAR dei EntityCommonStockSharesOutstanding (latest)) |
| Sales, last twelve months | $14.5B |
| Net income, last twelve months | $10.0B |
| Free cash flow, last twelve months | $4.3B |
| Latest reported quarter | Q/E Oct 2026 (of 25 quarters in the data pack) |
| Six-year price return vs S&P 500 | +1232.09% vs +118.28% |
| Worst peak-to-trough fall | -60.9% (2021-06-04 to 2022-12-28) |
What we could not verify
- TTM GAAP diluted EPS could not be summed from company facts because at least one of the last four quarters (typically Q4) has no standalone tagged EPS; trailing P/E is therefore taken from the labelled secondary source in valuation_label.md.
- Own-history P/E range not yet compiled for this company in the Phase 1 batch run; the label rests on peer-median, growth and PEG evidence.
- Brief fetch note: browser.open of the statistics page failed with a 429 rate-limit error; values were recorded from the stockanalysis.com Statistics & Valuation result returned by browser.search.
- Guidance record (each quarter scored against the guidance the company gave the quarter before) is not yet compiled for this company — it is a Phase 2 layer. The earnings strip below therefore uses reported EPS versus a year earlier, which is fully sourced from filings.
The IT factor — the most exciting thing the market is overlooking — is not assessed on an X-Ray page. It belongs to the Deep Dive (Phase 2), where it gets the evidence standard it needs. Leadership-era scoring (the six years split by chief executive) is likewise a Phase 2 layer; this page names the current chief executive only, from a sourced profile.
Sources
- SEC EDGAR submissions — Filing index; company legal name.
https://data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK0000106040.json - SEC EDGAR company facts — Quarterly financial spine: revenue, gross profit, net income, GAAP diluted EPS, operating cash flow, PP&E capex, buybacks, dividends, diluted shares.
https://data.sec.gov/api/xbrl/companyfacts/CIK0000106040.json - Nasdaq official daily history — Daily closes for the company; SPY (assetclass=etf) saved as raw/nasdaq_spy_raw.json over identical dates.
https://api.nasdaq.com/api/quote/WDC/historical?assetclass=stocks - Valuation multiples and peer figures — stockanalysis.com (SECONDARY, S&P Global data), fetched Oct 28, 2026; see valuation_label.md in the data pack.
Conventions: earliest-filed value per period, as first reported; cash-flow years-to-date differenced quarter by quarter; EPS never differenced; free cash flow = operating cash flow minus plant-and-equipment spending. This page is a dated snapshot — updates are new versions, never silent edits.