Seagate's big disks pump up outlook

EPS loves ATA

By Austin Modine • Get more from this author

Posted in Storage, 5th March 2008 01:11 GMT

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Seagate raised its third quarter financial outlook today, citing a healthy market for high-end ATA disk drives.

The world's largest HDD firm increased its non-GAAP earnings per share forecast to between 63 cents and 67 cents per share, up from 57 cents to 61 cents per share predicted earlier. Seagate still expects net revenue to be in the range of $3.2-$3.3bn.

In a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing today, Seagate said it expects overall demand in the March quarter to be average in terms of sales. But profitability for the quarter will be boosted by a "favorable mix" of enterprise and high capacity ATA gear, and overall pricing that has been "slightly favorable to the original plan."

"Whatever the macro environment is, in terms of our business and demand for storage and the mix of products, it's offsetting that and allowing us to manage the company very profitably and we feel good about that," Seagate CFO Charles Pope said today at a Morgan Stanley investment conference, according to Reuters .

The forecast contrasts with an Intel investor outlook update made yesterday. Chipzilla said it may suffer a gross profit margin slump for its current quarter because of sinking pricing in the NAND flash memory market.

All hail disk.®

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