Seagate, Western Digital resumed with Hold ratings at Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank analyst Sidney Ho resumed coverage of both Seagate Technology (STX) and Western Digital (WDC) with Hold ratings, and price targets of $42 and $45, respectively. The analyst said in a note partially titled "Cloudy near term, Cloud is also the future" that while hard disk drive, or HDD, is a mature industry, several interesting trends have emerged. First, nearline HDDs that are suited for mass storage in cloud data centers could drive 60%+ of the industry revenue by 2022 with above industry average margins. Second, technology innovations in the next 5-10 years could continue to drive cost improvements in the HDD industry. Third, while declining NAND flash memory prices have led to rising adoption of solid state drives, or SSDs, the cannibalization focuses on PCs and mission-critical enterprise applications, while nearline HDDs appear to be more immune. The analyst concluded that "while HDD revenues appear to be on a slow decline, changing mix will likely drive better profitability."
