Western Digital Corp. (NYSE:WDC)

It has very attractive valuation and $3.9 billion in cash.

Good free cash flow, good balance sheet, if company recovers to a PEG of 1 the stock goes to $65. Consistent past growth at over 13% and decent future expected growth at 10%.

Loads of cash plus aggressive revenue target...

Cloud computing.

TSA S&P 20+ percent growth '12.

Sandisk will eat its lunch, mechanical diskdrives suck.

ssd

Part of SSDD solid state drive index. Data centers are now making the move to SSD over spinning disks, and I suspect growth will be fast.

WDC primary revenue stream is from spinnings disks, same as STX IMO.

Disruption to factory manufacturing

Lots of cash, not much debt. According to their balance sheet, they could actually pay off all their debt, so I'm assuming it's "cheap" debt. Revenue and earnings aren't exactly what I like to see in a company, especially since those two are at best on a flat slope, and their inventory levels are getting higher, but, it's a relatively cheap stock with lots of cash. Not sure that it will outperform the S&P all that much, if at all, but it's a safe place to put a little bit of money. Keep a close eye on it though and see if the company can find ways to generate more revenue at a decent profit rate. If they can do that, you'll be glad you have some of your money in this cash hoarder of a stock.

Low P/E, HDD is not being phasing out anytime soon, with cloud computing, WD will gain advantages on its enterprise customers.

Cash.

The Hitachi deal seems to be good news for both WDC and the rest of the storage market as well.

(JJ) good growth, better numbers than competitors

Even if this is an industry on skid row I believe the takeover of HITs hard drive unit will boost earnings further and give it a P/E so ridiculously low it will have to garner further interest.

I do not agree with the current assumption that income must decrease over 50% the next year. The SSD market is still more expensive (5-10 times) and is currently lead by small companies (Corsair and OCZ) in need of more cash in order to grow.

As of today WD has shown a better growth rate than its closest competitor (Seagate), they are better positioned to compete on the SSD market and they have shown (in their mediaplayer) that they are able to compete with high end brands as Apple.

Because I said so.

herd mentality - better days ahead.

For most of its history, WD has been a drive manufacturer driven [sorry about that] by a very commodity-like market. Growth has been reasonably steady (mkt cap ~7.3B) but not spectacular. WD now appears to be expanding their target market into consumer electronics. Interesting slide show from the CES at http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/company/investor/CES2011_Final_IR.pdf. IMHO, if WD succeeds in establishing branded products in the targeted market, the potential for high-margin growth could make for a whole new company. Balance sheet, Income statement and Cash flow statement for the last 5 years could be interpreted as evidence that the strategy is working.