Western Digital Corporation Declares Quarterly Dividend of $0.15 (NASDAQ:WDC)

Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) declared a quarterly dividend on Wednesday, August 5th. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, September 8th will be paid a dividend of 0.15 per share by the data storage provider on Thursday, September 17th. This represents a c) dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.1%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, September 8th.

Western Digital has raised its dividend by an average of 0.6%annually over the last three years. Western Digital has a dividend payout ratio of 11.0% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Research analysts expect Western Digital to earn $17.77 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.60 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 3.4%.

Western Digital Stock Performance

WDC opened at $519.17 on Thursday. The company has a market capitalization of $178.95 billion, a P/E ratio of 31.00 and a beta of 2.14. Western Digital has a fifty-two week low of $73.14 and a fifty-two week high of $799.87. The stock has a fifty day moving average of $569.14 and a 200-day moving average of $415.61.

Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) last released its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, August 4th. The data storage provider reported $3.56 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.31 by $0.25. Western Digital had a net margin of 55.29% and a return on equity of 42.95%. The company had revenue of $3.75 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $3.70 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $1.66 earnings per share. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 43.8% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities research analysts predict that Western Digital will post 9.61 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

WDC has been the subject of several research analyst reports. Zacks Research upgraded shares of Western Digital from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, May 6th. Wall Street Zen upgraded shares of Western Digital from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, May 2nd. Evercore reissued an “outperform” rating and issued a $575.00 price target on shares of Western Digital in a research note on Tuesday, May 26th. Fox Advisors lowered shares of Western Digital from an “overweight” rating to an “equal weight” rating in a report on Monday, June 22nd. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company increased their target price on Western Digital from $575.00 to $730.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Friday, July 10th. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, eighteen have given a Buy rating and four have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $532.32.

About Western Digital

Western Digital Corporation is a global data storage company that designs, manufactures and sells a broad range of storage devices and systems for personal, enterprise and cloud applications. Headquartered in San Jose, California, the company develops hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), NAND flash components and finished storage products used in PCs, external storage, servers, network-attached storage (NAS) and embedded systems.

Its product portfolio spans consumer and commercial markets, including internal and external HDDs and SSDs, removable flash memory products and storage platforms for data center and enterprise environments.