- Tuesday, 9 February 2010
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Seagate beats numbers by a tad
SEAGATE HAD A relatively OK third quarter all things told. By that we mean above expectations in this otherwise dreary economy.
The raw numbers are that they shipped 39 million units, and took in $2.1 billion for them. This is above their last estimate of $1.6 to $2.0 billion and, in an economy where most companies don't hit even pessimistic estimates, every little gain helps.
Oddly, one of the high points according to Seagate was ATA products, which one would not expect the market to outperform on. On the other hand, 'enterprise' products took a dive by 20 per cent. To us, this says that people are upgrading their older machines and not buying new. If you make widgets, video cards, and CPUs that have a long upgrade path, things may be good for your company, but new shiny boxes are not a happy place to be this quarter.
When talking about between now to June, Seagate starts out with the disclaimer, "Current uncertainty in global economic conditions makes it particularly difficult to predict product demand and other related matters and makes it more likely that Seagate's actual results could differ materially from current expectations." For once, things like this are actually warranted.
That said, the magic 8-ball on the CFO's desk says that Q4 will basically be flat compared to Q3. This, combined with a restructuring and cutting of their dividend, will make things trend from reddish to blackish on their balance sheets. All in all, they are doing OK.
The hard numbers, in other words profit and loss, will be announced during their quarterly call on April 21. You can witness it here at 2pm Pacific time, but right now, you get a blank page.
Given the rosy (or not completely disastrous) numbers, could this be the first sign of an economic spring? µ
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I think you are on the money here, its a misers market. This used to be the sort of situation AMD were well positioned to exploit.
Alas they no longer produce for recent Intel sockets as they did for So7 which was one key to their early success. They also missed the opportunity to cultivate SoA and 939 users IMHO.
They were doing so well with Athlon64 it made no economic sense to them at the time and they abandoned the miser strategy. In retrospect it was not only a betrayal of their scrimper fanbase but a conceit.
While AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 was a nod towards upgrade path marketing it failed IMHO to address real users upgrade requirements and because AMD are not longer the best chips.
Will be interested to see AMDs quarterly.
For Oldsters in Audiance, Remember First SATA Mains, its Was Late 2003, AMD Had Announced 64 bit, Sata Was supposed to Speeede Demonize Your Unit, First ide connection Sata, Wow, Was That Bad. Held off Developement for year, finally Sata II came & still Freeze/Crash where common. Until Seagate Made Perpendicular HDD With NCQ.(Charlies Favorite) You Wouldn't Think 17 Instructions of Batch Extensions Would Ruin HDD/Sata, Yet it did, Formed Virus Like Mechanisms' Inside HDD where bits of GOTO or DELAY or /E or whatever monthdate stamp was entered with incoming data,Blew Apart. BAD Parts & Software Made BAD ThruPut, Much Like Today,OverHeating & No Credible OutPut. Maybe SSD v. isn't or just part of need for NCQ with Voltage incompatibilities, maybe its all need for NCQ in SSD Field, NOW. We Shall See.UDMA Was Supposed to Save HDD, Yet NO Software Was ForthComing, Therefore Marketing Shell or Swill, until 2005. Even Today Most UDMA Units Don't Perform in UDMA Due to Lack of Software Specific UDMA ADD-On.So Whole Arena Is Mess With I/O Storage, In ?Some Fundumental Ways.BTW HDD was $2 Gb when NO Good, Now its 20 Cents Gb & O.K.. Header Should Read CrapHardwareMakesBucks. drashek
Strange, they did well on ATA devices, yet they are still working towards disco'ing all their ATA drives. I sell SATA in lots of new systems, but over the counter, I sell IDE/ATA 5-1 in my store. They are getting more expensive and harder to get because the HDD companies want to push everyone to SATA, but hopefully when they see numbers are increasing for IDE drives, they might reconsider killing them off.
But, then again, we're talking big bull-headed companies. Numbers don't lie, but often their projections and opinions win out, which is just plain stupid.