*May The Lord rest the souls of those who have departed in the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy, and console their loved ones.

On October 22nd, 2012 Western Digital Corp. released their Q1 2013 financial results.  Here are a few key points that are worth noting:

Valuation Ratios:  The cheapest Company in America?

"Citigroup‘s Joe Yoo today cut his ratings on hard drive and storage technology developers Seagate Technology (STX) and Western Digital (WDC) to Sell from Buy, writing that there is a chance of 25% downside to current estimates for the companies this quarter given what may be drastically lower volume of drive shipments.  Yoo cut his Seagate target to $25 from $37, and cut his Western Digital target to $32 from $53. …For Western, his estimates go to $15.3 billion and $9.99 in EPS from a prior $15.84 billion and $10.68 per share."

STX, WDC Cut to Sell at Citi; Estimates Too High Amidst PC Slowdown (Tech Trader Daily, Oct. 12th, 2012)

Shares of Western Digital (WDC) were sold for investors accounts on August 13th, 2012 at $44.  As of close of market on Friday Oct. 19th, the shares were being traded for a mere 34.88.  A decline of a full $9.12 or almost 21% in barely 9 weeks.  Is the value of the company really less than it was, when the shares recently traded at $44?

On May 17th around 2 p.m. a call came in from a friend, he said he had just received a call from his broker, who asked him “what he wanted to do about Facebook’s IPO”.    The response was intricate and subtle;

“wouldn't touch it with a hundred foot pole”

The advice was to consider buying Western Digital (WDC) instead if he had to buy something.    Sensing that the answer may have been a bit curt, the following email was sent shortly after the phone call:

On August 11th, 2010 we acquired shares of Western Digital Corp. for others accounts at $24.15 a share in the midst of tremendous pessimism about the storage industry.  On September 17th, 2010 we outlined a few simple views that brought about this decision and published our article “640K ought to be enough for anybody…” WDC vs. STX (we used prices as of Sept. 10th, 2010 for the purposes of the article, although the shares were actually purchased on August 11th, as noted in the article itself in reference to “early August”).  On October 1st, 2010 Seekingalpha also published the article here.

“640K ought to be enough for anybody…”            

Recently the hard drive crashed on one of our home computers, suddenly and without cause.  When we took it apart to replace the hard drive, we discovered it was a Seagate SATA 500GB / 7200 RPM.  It was a good opportunity to upgrade the operating system, and install a larger drive… perhaps 1TB.  About a year ago when the machine was purchased, 500GB still seemed large, now it seemed small and inadequate, particularly for storing our large and growing collection of home videos.  Cost to replace (without price shopping): $49.00.