Western Digital jumps as Q1 sales and earnings beat, guidance better than expected, and dividend hiked

Western Digital, a maker of the decades-old data storage devices known as hard disk drives that’s become a top stock this year due to the AI boom, had nothing but good news in its Q1 earnings report released after the close of New York trading on Thursday.

Shares are up double digits in after-hours trading.

Here’s how it looked:

• Fiscal Q1 revenue of $2.82 billion vs. $2.73 billion consensus analyst expectations, per FactSet.

• Adjusted earnings per share of $1.78 vs. the $1.59 analysts predicted.

• Guidance for current-quarter adjusted EPS of $1.72 to $2.03 (compared to analyst estimates of $1.73) and sales between $2.8 billion and $3 billion (estimate: $2.83 billion).

• A 25% boost to its quarterly cash dividend up to $0.125 per share.

Western Digital — and rival Seagate Technology Holdings — were some of the hardest-hit stocks of the market’s tariff tantrum back in April due to their Asian manufacturing base.

But after posting surprisingly strong quarterly results over the summer, traders cottoned on to the fact that in an era defined by data, the makers of these relatively affordable data storage devices were going to be deluged with orders for the foreseeable future. Between its last earnings report and the close of trading on Thursday, Western Digital was up more than 90%.