After the Move ·
$STXB Al Shugart started it in 1979. The first product was the 5.25-inch hard drive. That drive helped start the personal computer.
Then flash got cheap. Laptops dropped the spinning disc. The company got written off. Sales fell from $11.7 billion to $6.6 billion. The stock closed $84 at the end of 2024, then washed out near $66 in early 2025.
The racks changed the job. Training data, checkpoints, logs. None of it needs to be fast. It needs to be cheap, and it needs to stay. A flash drive is the wrong tool. A spinning disc is the cheap one.
💰 Last year sales were $12.2 billion, up 34%. They made $3.2 billion. Free cash flow was $3.1 billion, a record. Data centers were 81% of the last quarter. That quarter was $3.6 billion, up 48%. Gross margin was 52%.
The drive is the shift. They heat a tiny spot on the platter so more data fits on the same disc. A 30-terabyte drive. Qualified with the big US cloud buyers. They guided the quarter that just ended to $4.1 billion. The print is October 27.
📈 Chart. $84 at the end of 2024. Near $66 in early 2025. $274 by the end of 2025. Tagged $1,145. Closed $1,092 on June 22. Sitting at $935. Still about 18% under the high.
What is real 👀
The orders, the margin, the cash. This is not a story stock printing a loss.
What is not 🫣
Hard drives are a cycle. They already lived the last bust. This is a boom print. Next one is October 27.
A company everyone buried near $66 just got paid for the cheap storage 💲
The move already happened. That is the point of this series.
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