Western Digital stock climbed 9.12% after multiple Wall Street firms raised price targets, citing strong demand for hard disk drives and storage infrastructure to support AI workloads. Analysts point to tight supply, firm HDD pricing, and exabyte growth that may exceed the company's historical 25% growth pace, positioning WDC as a core component of AI infrastructure buildout.
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Western Digital (WDC) stock rose 9.12% on strong analyst calls. Cantor Fitzgerald raised its price target from $660 to $900, BofA boosted its target to $732, and Melius Research launched coverage with a Buy rating and a $1,050 target after the stock fell more than 20% from recent highs.
Why it matters
Analysts frame WDC as a key supplier to AI infrastructure buildout, pointing to tight hard disk drive (HDD) supply, firm pricing, and projected exabyte shipments that may outpace WDC's long-term 25% growth guidance. The company reported roughly $3.34B in quarterly revenue, $3.21B in net income, a 45.4% gross margin, and a 61.4% EBIT margin, suggesting strong pricing power and operating leverage.
What to watch
WDC remains volatile, with 7–12% drops during recent broad tech selloffs in late June. The stock has traded in a wide range between roughly $539 and $639 in recent sessions, and macro fears—including reports that Anthropic is developing its own AI chip with Samsung—have rattled the sector. Traders should monitor key technical levels and liquidity given the conflicting short-term chart pressure versus the long-term AI storage narrative.
Western Digital is trading at the intersection of two opposing forces: fundamental strength in AI storage demand and macro-driven volatility that has hammered high-beta semiconductor and tech names. The company's latest quarterly results—$3.34B in revenue, a 61.4% EBIT margin, and roughly $1B in free cash flow—show a business with substantial pricing power and operating leverage, underpinning why three major analysts have issued or raised bullish targets within days of each other.
The AI storage thesis rests on two concrete observations from the body: tight HDD supply and exabyte shipment growth that may outrun WDC's own long-term 25% growth guidance. Melius Research highlighted emerging "physical AI" applications and video-heavy models as drivers of massive storage demand, a use case that justifies the company's relevance despite AI chip competition from new entrants like Anthropic and Samsung. However, the body also notes that the stock has fallen hard from the $700s and traded in wide daily ranges, reflecting investor jitters about AI profitability, interest rates, and broader sector concerns—headwinds that have nothing to do with WDC's core business but have suppressed the stock regardless. For traders, this creates a setup where strong fundamentals and bullish analyst calls coexist with real short-term volatility risk.
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