WD Announces Q1 Revenue of $2.4 Billion and Net Income of $197 Million, or $0.84 Per Share

Revenue Up 9 Percent, Hard Drive Shipments Up 15 Percent, From Year-ago Quarter, $390 Million Cash Generated from Operations

LAKE FOREST, Calif., Oct 19, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ --

Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) today reported revenue of $2.4 billion, hard-drive unit shipments of 50.7 million and net income of $197 million, or $0.84 per share for its first fiscal quarter ended Oct. 1, 2010. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $2.2 billion, shipped 44.1 million hard drives, and reported net income and earnings per share of $288 million and $1.25, respectively.

"In a quarter characterized by aggressive industry pricing, we remained solidly profitable, grew revenues and unit shipments year-over-year, and generated $390 million in cash from operations," said John Coyne, president and chief executive officer. "Our low-cost business model and strong balance sheet enable us to weather the seasonality and cycles of the hard drive industry such as we experienced during the last two quarters.

"We will continue to focus on quality, reliability, availability and profitable growth to maintain our industry leadership," said Coyne. "We remain excited about the significant opportunities being created by the unabated growth in digital content in the home and workplace."

The investment community conference call to discuss these results will be broadcast live over the Internet today at 2 p.m. Pacific/5 p.m. Eastern. The call will be accessible live and on an archived basis via the link below. The company is publishing an expanded investor summary sheet today on the investor relations section of its website. After the conclusion of today's webcasted conference call, the summary sheet will be updated to reflect the company's guidance.

About WD

WD, one of the storage industry's pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company designs and produces reliable, high-performance hard drives and solid state drives that keep users' data accessible and secure from loss. Its advanced technologies are configured into applications for client and enterprise computing, embedded systems and consumer electronics, as well as its own consumer storage and media products.