Western Digital Q1: Scrapes past Wall Street expectations

Western Digital on Thursday announced its first quarter earnings, scraping through analyst expectations on what was a relatively quiet three-month period.

The storage supplier reported first fiscal quarter earnings of $2.05 per share on revenue of $3.8 billion (statement), compared to $2.06 per share and $4 billion in revenue on the same quarter a year earlier. Non-GAAP earnings were $2.12 per share.

Wall Street was looking for first quarter earnings of $2.05 a share on revenue of $3.78 billion.

Western Digital generated $680 million in cash from its operations, ending with $4.9 billion in cash and equivalents. During the three-month period, the company spent $150 million to buy back 2.3 million shares.

Chief executive Steve Milligan said in prepared remarks:

"We continued to perform well in the September quarter as we remained focused on delivering value to our customers through differentiated and innovative storage solutions in all of our served markets."

"Our HGST and WD subsidiaries continued to execute very well. Outstanding linearity drove strong operating results, with gross margins above the midpoint of our model range and earnings per share well above the high end of our guidance. Longer term, we are very excited about our ability to enable the ongoing creation, storage and management of digital content by consumers and businesses."

Western Digital ($WDC) was up 0.6 percent at market close. In after-hours trading, its stock was down about 2.2 percent.