The Quarter in Brief
Western Digital (WD) reported the first quarter of its fiscal 2027, the 13 weeks ended October 2, 2026, after the market closed on October 22. Revenue was $4.38 billion, up 55% from a year earlier. Reported earnings per share were $4.63, up 51% from $3.07. Non-GAAP earnings per share, the company's own measure that leaves out stock-based pay, restructuring charges and some tax and investment items, were $4.64, up from $1.78.
Both figures were ahead of expectations: analysts had expected about $4.14 billion of revenue and non-GAAP earnings of about $4.08 a share. What made the quarter different was price. WD now sells only hard drives, almost nine-tenths of them to cloud data centres, and the average price it received for each unit of storage in its cloud business rose about 25% from a year earlier. That pushed gross margin to 57.8%, the highest of the last eight quarters.