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From: Sam	7/10/2010 2:29:31 PM
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Seagate to Report Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Year-End Financial Results on July 20, 2010 SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX - News) today announced it will report fiscal fourth quarter and year-end 2010 financial results on Tuesday, July 20, 2010, after the close of the market. A subsequent conference call for the investment community will take place at 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time. The conference call can be accessed online at seagate.com or by telephone as follows: USA: (800) 901-5241 International: (617) 786-2963 Participant Passcode: 44887384 Replay A replay will be available beginning July 20 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time. The replay can be accessed through Seagate's website at seagate.com

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From: Sam	7/10/2010 2:32:23 PM
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A post from vikeswon on Yahoo.... Last week and the week ahead 10-Jul-10 07:37 am Lack of a negative preannouncement and a highly over sold stock has caused the shorts to back off. Judging from their gang bang on XRXTX after a strong report and outlook, they will probably let STX rise before the call and then try to retest the previous lows with a trading orgy after the call. Option expirations on Friday may limit upside for STX since a close at $14 on Friday will kill off the most in-money puts and calls. As far as last week goes, Noble Financial modestly lowered their numbers for STX & WDC to the lower end of Company guidance given at their April earnings calls. Noble remains upbeat citing numerous indications that the demand for storage has picked up and should be strong, see below. BOM lowered their June EPS to $0.78, but whacked their Sept outlook by 20 cents to $0.73 citing margin pressures. BOM's assumption of lower margins flys in the face of seasonal trends where margins and pricing firm during September, strong channel demand, and expectations of laptop component shortages latter this year, Another point opposing BOM's view of significantly lower September margins was Avian Research's report a few weeks ago citing relatively positive September OEM contract price negotiations, see link. messages.finance.yahoo.com Well despite the best hopes of the shorts and most of the I-Bank bozos slashing their June estimates for STX and WDC, there has been NO NEGATIVE PREANNOUNCEMENT. Imagine, all the red faces when STX & WDC report! The spineless buy side continues to be obsessed with Europe. That paranoia along with the seasonal short in the drive stocks has produced a total disconnect from reality, as seen by: 1. STX and WDC WILL REPORT RECORD RESULTS FOR THE JUNE QTR. 2. Despite the best effort of shills like Kumar and Schwab at Craig Hellum, drive inventories have seen a significant draw down since the end of April and channel pricing has been firming over the last 3 weeks, as it usually does this time of year. 3. Laptop PC manufacturer, Quanta, just reported a record June preceeded by a strong April. 4. XRTX just posted record results and guided higher, while stating storage demand was strong including EUROPE. 5. Last week, MSFT reported impressive demand for Windows 7. 6. In mid-June, the major laptop PC makers projected 10-15% unit growth for their September quarter. 7. NTAP, HPQ, ORCL, and Accenture all recently voiced a positive outlook for storage/PCs. 8. Expectations of component shortages in 2H10. As I noted previously, the September outlook will trump the June results. Due to the sour mood of the market and the reaction to XRTX's strong report, Luczo and Coyne may sandbag the September outlook and latter in the quarter provide a more upbeat outlook.

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From: Moonray	7/12/2010 4:57:37 PM
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Buy, Sell, or Hold Seagate? Eric Bleeker - July 12, 2010 If you see a Ferrari selling for Honda Accord prices, the first instinct is to ask what the catch is. So, when I was perusing my watch list recently and saw Seagate Technology (Nasdaq: STX) was trading at just under five times its trailing free cash flow, I was immediately suspicious. After all, Seagate is a leader in hard-drive technology, and while it has been slower than some rivals to enter new growth areas such as solid-state drives; its fundamentals look solid. To better sort out the Seagate pricing mystery, here's a series of reasons to buy, sell, or hold the company. Buy: Compelling valuation: Allow me to reiterate: It's trading at less than five times trailing free cash flow! That's a pretty low value for an industry leader. Not only that, but all that cash produced over the last year has allowed Seagate to fortify its balance sheet for harder times. The company now has more cash on hand than total debt. Better yet, new management has managed to squeeze out a bloated cost structure, which should help ensure the company can keep up high cash flow once constrained supplies clear up and competition intensifies. Hold: Commodity product at a peak: There's little that separates the hard drives of Seagate and main competitors Hitachi, Toshiba, and Western Digital (NYSE: WDC). With Western Digital picking up market share and eyeing Seagate's enterprise stronghold, competition should intensify. If industry capacity increases and there's any economic downturn, hard-drive makers could suffer through some brutal oversupply and pricing battles once again. Sell: Solid-State Drives (SSDs): The huge question mark in Seagate's business. Solid-state drives don't require moving parts like the traditional hard drives Seagate generates nearly all its revenue from, and they have several other benefits such as less power consumption. However, they're also more expensive. The SSD field is full of competitors. SanDisk (Nasdaq: SNDK), STEC (Nasdaq: STEC), and Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) are all working to carve out their own niche across the consumer and enterprise flash memory market. Also, yes, the market for SSDs should continue to grow at a dramatic pace in coming years. Make no mistake, competition is fierce, and Seagate is coming from behind. However, even with the rise of SSDs, Seagate should still see robust demand within the enterprise, an area of staggering data growth that will still demand cheap options for storing massive amounts of data. Given the price difference between Seagate's bread-and-butter magnetic drives and newer SSDs, Seagate still has a long run before SSDs eclipse hard drives. The final call At $14 per share, Seagate looks like a steal. The buy considerations definitely outweigh the sell and hold risk factors. Don't let the SSD boogeyman scare you off at these prices; there's enough life left in traditional hard disk drives that Seagate should be a winner. o~~~ O

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From: Sam	7/15/2010 7:16:34 PM
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There is no sector that is less loved than disk drives. Disk Drives: Fundamentals Weakening, Valuations Cheapening By Eric Savitz So, my headline doesn’t quite rhyme, but you get the idea: the Street is faced with a serious conundrum when it comes to the disk-drive stocks. On the one hand, estimates are coming down, and there are worries that both the June and September quarters could disappoint. And on the other hand…the stocks sure do look cheap. The deterioration of hard-drive fundamentals in recent weeks has driven a slew of analysts to bring down their EPS estimates and price targets, and we got another dose of that today: * Wedbush analyst Kaushik Roy repeated his Neutral ratings on both Seagate (STX) and Western Digital (WDC) today, chopping his STX target to $20, from $23, and reducing his WDC target to $42, from $48. Roy notes that pricing in the June quarter was slightly more aggressive than in the March quarter; ergo he trimmed his estimates. For the June quarter, he goes to 84 cents from 87 cents for STX, and to $1.44 from $1.48 for WDC. On the other hand, he writes that “if people are short” the two stocks, he recommends covering, with both stocks down around 20% since mid-April. But he adds that he will monitor the pricing and supply/demand environment before getting more positive on the stocks. * Gleacher & Co. analyst Dinesh Moorjani repeats his Buy rating on Seagate today, but trims his target to $22, from $24, and cuts his estimate for the quarter to 71 cents from 85 cents. His view is that a reset of expectations is now behind us, and expectations for the September quarter have become overly cautious. Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar writes that he thinks the total available market in the quarter for the drive makers was at or below the guidance level of 156-161 million units offered by both STX and WDC; he adds that the competitive environment “turned aggressive” towards quarter end, with OEM pricing down high single digits, and channel prices down double digits. Kumar thinks it is too early to buy the stocks, writing that he looks to turn more constructive once supply and demand are back in balance. Meanwhile, the stocks trade at remarkably low P/E multiples, even for the historically low multiple drive industry: STX trades for 4.3x expected June 2010 EPS, while WDC at 5.2x. In today’s trading: * STX is down 32 cents, or 2.2%, to $14.66. * WDC is down 31 cents, or 1%, to $32.38.

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To: Paul Senior who wrote (7677)	7/18/2010 11:43:33 PM
From: Sam	of 7818

Worldwide PC shipments increased 21% in 2Q10, says Gartner Press release, July 16; Joseph Tsai, DIGITIMES [Friday 16 July 2010] digitimes.com [EDIT: Market share charts are in the original.] Worldwide PC shipments reached 82.9 million units in the second quarter of 2010, a 20.7% increase from the second quarter of 2009, according to preliminary results by Gartner. The second-quarter results were slightly above Gartner's earlier market outlook. Gartner had expected second-quarter PC shipments to grow 19.3%. "The preliminary second quarter results indicate ongoing improvement of the PC market, and it marks the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth on an on-year basis," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "End-user spending grew approximately 13% in the second quarter. ASPs continue to decline, but at a much slower rate compared with the last two years." "Mini-notebook (netbook) shipment growth slowed significantly in the second quarter of 2010," Kitagawa said. "Mini-notebook shipment growth still exceeded growth rates of the overall mobile PC market, but mini-notebook growth slowed to the low 20% range compared with more than 70% in the last two quarters. This slowdown indicates that mini-notebooks are entering a mature growth stage." Hewlett-Packard (HP) maintained its worldwide lead in PC shipments, but its growth rate was below the industry average as the company tried to protect margins in key regions. For example, HP did not participate in the aggressive pricing that was seen in Asia Pacific. HP also under-performed in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) with weak professional mobile growth. Acer continued to record strong shipment growth worldwide, fueled by solid PC sales in EMEA and Asia Pacific. Dell registered its second consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Uptake in the professional PC market secured Dell's PC business, but the consumer market was still a challenge for the company. Lenovo's PC shipments increased 47.2% in the second quarter of 2010, but there were some concerns over profitability as Lenovo was aggressive on pricing in key regions. Asustek Computer had the strongest growth rate among the top-five vendors worldwide in the second quarter, as its shipments increased 78.5%. Asustek was able to mix its product lineup from mini-notebooks and focused on selling more standard mobile PCs for better margins. In the US, PC shipments surpassed 17.9 million units in the second quarter of 2010, a 16% increase from the same period last year. The professional PC market received a boost from the PC refresh cycle. The professional PC market growth was driven by healthy seasonal demand from the public sector despite the budget deficit issues. Small- and mid-size businesses (SMBs), as well as large enterprises, are expected to ramp up in the second half of 2010. "The consumer PC market registered double-digit shipment growth, but consumer mobile shipment growth slowed. This was due in part to slower growth of mini-notebooks," Kitagawa said. "Surging popularity of Apple's iPad temporarily cannibalized mini-notebooks, as well as consumer notebook sales to some degree. It is not certain at this stage if the cannibalization will continue with the current price point of media tablets." HP continued to be the industry leader in the US PC market in the second quarter of 2010. Dell maintained the number two position, supported by its sales into the professional PC market. Acer experienced flat growth due to slowing sales of mini-notebooks and low-end notebooks. Gartner's early study indicated that Apple recorded strong Mac shipments with no signs of iPad cannibalization. Gartner's PC group does not track media tablet sales in this PC shipment data, so iPad sales are not included in these results. In the second quarter of 2010, PC shipments in EMEA totaled 24.1 million units, an increase of 21.6% from the second quarter last year. "For the second consecutive quarter the EMEA PC market exhibited double-digit growth, signaling continued strength of the EMEA PC market despite uncertain economic conditions," said Ranjit Atwal, principal research analyst at Gartner. The EMEA PC market continued to be bolstered by very strong mobile consumer demand across all regions. "We expected the share of mini-notebooks to decline but they sustained 20% of the total mobile PC market, indicating their permanent presence in the PC market in EMEA. The professional PC market has been more affected by both the economic conditions and pricing stabilization, and we expect demand to pick up in the second half of 2010," said Atwal. Central Eastern Europe remained the fastest growing regions sequentially followed by Western Europe and the Middle East and Africa. The economic concerns of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain caused uncertainty in the EMEA PC market making the demand in the market more volatile. Overall, vendor performances were very strong in the second quarter of 2010 and were not confined to the top-five vendors. The top-five vendors all exhibited double-digit growth this quarter, Dell performed in low single digits as its UK concentration and consumer performance weighed down its performance. The top performing vendors Asustek, Samsung and Sony used mini-notebooks as a vehicle for growth. In the second quarter of 2010, Acer regained the number one position from HP while Asustek moved to the number four position." Acer continued to outperform the market using a combination of good product mix and pricing strategies to secure retail shelf space," said Atwal. "While the first half of 2010 has been very strong and driven by the consumer PC market, the second half will increasingly be dependent on the business market, and the economic uncertainties and public austerity measures may shift demand into the end of 2010 and even 2011," said Atwal. In Asia Pacific, PC shipments surpassed 27.8 million units, up 25.4% from the second quarter of 2009. Markets in the region were off to a slow start in the quarter with news of economic uncertainties in Europe due to the credit crisis. However, the impact was limited, and market sentiment improved, releasing pent-up demand for PCs from late May onward.

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From: Sam	7/19/2010 11:49:02 PM
	of 7818

Of hybrid hard drives and capacity boosts Coughlin's cogitations By Chris Mellor Posted in Blocks and Files, 16th July 2010 11:18 GMT theregister.co.uk The extra platters and shingled writing future revealed by Xyratex CEO Steve Barber seems to have been influenced by Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates and his "Hard Disk Drive Capital Equipment Market and Technology Report". Coughlin's reports are used by many people in the hard disk drive (HDD) production and buying communities. I thought talking direct to the man himself might be a good idea and so we had an email Q&A. Here it is, with Tom's replies in bold type: El Reg: How do think hybrid hard drives will develop (flash + spinning disk in one enclosure)? Do they need host software changes? Which markets are they best suited for? I think there will be more than one path pursued which will combine HDDs and flash memory. One approach is the one Seagate [Momentus XT] is taking where they put the flash in the PCB [printed circuit board] of the HDD and use it for a non-volatile storage cache. This version differs from what they and other companies offered in 2007 in that it does not depend upon the operating system to perform its intended function. I have actually been using one of these drives in my laptop for about a week now and I do think that my system is a bit faster as a result although I have not quantified performance. Other approaches will use separate HDDs on the SATA interface and solid state storage that may be separate SATA (or mSATA) devices or may use other interfaces such as PCIe. My belief is that this will be a better path for wide-spread adoption of solid state storage in computers where they improve overall system performance with some flash but not enough flash memory to attempt to replace a HDD; the economics of that are just not there. El Reg: Will single-platter 2.5-inch hard drives be successful? How much cheaper are they to make than standard dual-platter 2.5-inch drives? Could we see hybrid single platter drives, for example in tablets where they could provide near-flash performance at a lower price than flash. No reason why not, we have had 1-platter 3.5-inch and I think 2.5 inch drives for a while. By not having a second disk and two heads I think HDD companies will save $10 to $15 on their bill of materials costs and thus could either offer a lower price 2.5-inch straight HDD or perhaps as you suggest a low cost hybrid drive. The trade-off is lower storage capacity with 2 disk surfaces instead of 4 (about a 2X factor). An interesting aspect of a single platter 2.5 inch drive is that it could be thinner than a 2-platter disk drive and thus fit better into thin tablets and other products. Disk drive capacity increase challenge El Reg: How do you see the HDD industry solving the challenges of increasing disk drive capacity facing it as current PMR technology runs out of steam? Do you see the transitions to the next technology being (a) Shingled writing or adding platters or both while staying with PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording), (b) then HAMR (Heat-assisted Magnetic Recording) or a similar thermally-assisted technology, (c) then DIscrete Track Media or Bit-Patterned Media or both? Adding platter is the easiest but it also adds overall cost and if too many platters, drive thickness so this only gets you so far. Shingle writing requires work on the servo system and track following (so firmware and electronic issues) but it requires no changes in the media and little if any on the heads. However there are significant architectural and use case issues. Write performance could suffer once the drive is fully written since a rewrite process would be required to add new data. The memory management would get a bit like flash memory with their erase/write cycles. In addition to the performance hit the increase in TPI (tracks per inch) is probably only 30 per cent and at most 50 per cent and is a one time only bump. As a consequence by 2014-2015 we will need some thing new such as HAMR or patterned media to continue the areal density growth. These technologies still have significant technology or capital cost issues that get in the way of implementation so we may see a temporary decline in areal density growth to maybe 20 per cent for a couple of years. Of course breakthroughs happen and like in semiconductor line width we could see paths to continued areal density increase that avoid a slow-down. El Reg: What are the timescales and areal densities and capacities involved with each of these? Unaided perpendicular recording gets us to about 1Tbit/in2, shingle writing gets us at best to 1.5Tbit/in2 (and by the way WORM type applications such as backup and DVRs may do fine with this approach). If we are to achieve 2Tbit/in2 or higher we need some new breakthrough that is currently unclear or HAMR or patterned media. El Reg: Will we see 12Gbit/s SAS interfaces? Will drives with additional platters need such a faster interface? I think faster interfaces are quite likely. In particular SSDs can already saturate 6Gbit/s interfaces today and could also do that tomorrow. Also these channels (or controllers) may be shared between devices and thus we need a higher composite data rate to support these devices than any one device would require. El Reg: Will we see pure USB interfaces for external drives with no SATA interface at all and no need for a SATA-to-USB bridge inside the drive? Maybe, we could see more specialisation in drives for external storage such as this, combined with shingled writing as well perhaps? Also what about Light Peak? Coughlin is seeing two intermediate technologies capable of boosting capacity before there is a transition to post-PMR Technologies. These are adding platters and heads on the one hand, and shingled writing on the other. My opinion is that we could see these in 2011 and 2012, These would be followed by either HAMR or patterned media. These I reckon are a post-2013 story. It appears that the use of single platter drives and hybrid SSD-HDD products would enable HDD technology to withstand flash replacement of HDDs in some sectors of the HDD market. These will be a 2011 story, possibly a late-2010 one as Seagate's Momentus XT is out there already.

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From: Sam	7/20/2010 4:28:30 PM
	of 7818

Seagate Technology Reports Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2010 Financial Results Record fiscal year profit of $1.61 billion and earnings per share of $3.14 Record fiscal year shipments of 193 million disk drives Record fourth quarter operating results finance.yahoo.com SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX - News) today reported financial results for the quarter ended July 2, 2010 of 46.8 million disk drive unit shipments, revenue of $2.66 billion, gross margin of 27.4%, net income of $379 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.76. The financial results for the quarter include $6 million of purchased intangibles amortization expense, $16 million of restructuring charges, $3 million expense (Other income/expense) for the May 2010 termination of Seagate’s revolving credit facility offset by a $6 million recovery of previously impaired long-lived assets and a $50 million income tax benefit due principally to valuation allowance adjustments related to deferred tax assets. The aggregate impact of these items was a $31 million increase to net income or approximately $0.06 per diluted share. For the fiscal year ended July 2, 2010 the company reported 193.2 million disk drive unit shipments, revenue of $11.4 billion, gross margin of 28.1%, net income of $1.61 billion and diluted earnings per share of $3.14. The financial results for the fiscal year ended July 2, 2010 include $35 million of purchased intangibles amortization expense, $66 million of restructuring costs, $3 million expense (Other income/expense) related to the May 2010 termination of the revolving credit line, a net write down of long-lived assets of $57 million offset by a $50 million income tax benefit due principally to valuation allowance adjustments related to deferred tax assets. The aggregate impact of these items was a $111 million reduction of net income or approximately $0.22 per diluted share. “I'm very encouraged by our financial and operational performance throughout fiscal 2010,” said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO. “In fiscal year 2010 we delivered record shipments, profitability and operating margin. The company responded well to the increase in global hard drive demand, which grew 22% year-over-year, introduced key new products, continued to strengthen the capital structure, and remained focused on improving key business fundamentals to position Seagate for future growth. “Specific to our fiscal fourth quarter, two of our key assumptions entering the quarter did not materialize as expected and impacted our financial results – macro-economic stability and pricing reflective of balanced supply and demand. Industry demand in the fiscal fourth quarter was at the low end of our expectations due primarily to issues emanating from the debt crisis in Europe and slowing consumer spending especially in the U.S. and Europe. The lower unit shipments and unfavorable pricing at some key capacity points impacted Seagate’s ability to deliver revenue and earnings for the quarter within our target range. Despite these factors, Seagate reported the highest operating results for a June quarter in the company's history.” Conference Call Seagate will hold a conference call to review the fourth fiscal quarter and full-year results today at 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time. The conference call will consist of opening comments from Steve Luczo followed by a question and answer session with the executive management team. During today’s conference call, the company will provide an outlook for its first fiscal quarter of 2011, including key underlying assumptions. Seagate has issued a Supplemental Commentary document that contains information historically presented during the conference call. The Supplemental Commentary will not be read during today’s call, but rather it is available in the investor relations section of seagate.com. The conference call can be accessed online at seagate.com or by phone as follows: USA: (800) 901-5241 International: (617) 786-2963 Participant Passcode: 44887384 Replay A replay will be available beginning today at 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time. The replay can be accessed from seagate.com.

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From: Sam	8/10/2010 11:38:24 AM
	of 7818

Intel, AMD shares fall as analysts warn of slowing PC market 08/10 11:04 AM SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Shares of Intel Corp. (INTC:$19.87,00$-0.78,00-3.78%) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD:$6.94,00$-0.4800,-6.47%) fell sharply Tuesday morning, amid signs of a slowing personal computer market, with one analyst warning that orders are "falling of a cliff." Intel (INTC:$19.87,00$-0.78,00-3.78%) sank nearly 4% to $19.84, while AMD was off more than 5% to $7 at the opening bell. Other chip makers also saw their shares fall sharply, including Nvidia Corp. (NVDA:$9.275,0$-0.365,0-3.79%) , Micron Technology (MU:$7.22,00$-0.32,00-4.24%) and SanDisk Corp. (SNDK:$45.25,00$-1.12,00-2.42%) . The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index was down 2.7%, setting the pace for a tech sector retreat. "Checks in Taiwan indicate PC orders falling off a cliff," wrote J.P. Morgan analyst Christopher Danely. "We believe a host of PC companies pushed out orders throughout the supply chain." Baird analyst Tristan Gerra downgraded Intel's (INTC:$19.87,00$-0.78,00-3.78%) rating to neutral from outperform, while noting signs of "a sharp deterioration in PC-related order trends over the past week, following a below-expectation July." He added: "Our checks point to a sharp deceleration in PC order trends continuing into August, after a below-expectation July month. Hopes of a meaningful recovery for the September month are less and less likely, in our view, leading to a likely below-expectation third quarter." Wedbush analyst Patrick Wang also said that, based on checks, "we come away incrementally more negative on the PC supply chain, in light of lowered third-quarter forecasts for both Intel (INTC:$19.87,00$-0.78,00-3.78%) and AMD as well as an expectation for softer DRAM pricing and questionable demand." "Visibility is now hazier than before," Wang added.

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