Lake Forest-based disk drive maker Western Digital Corp. on Thursday reported March quarter results that were down from a year ago but surpassed Wall Street’s expectations.
Western Digital reported $1.6 billion in sales, down 24% from a year earlier and just beating analysts’ expected $1.5 billion in revenue.
Excluding charges for research and development, acquisitions and restructuring, the company posted profits of $68 million, down 76% from a year earlier and beating analysts’ expectation of $22 million in profits.
Western Digital said it shipped some 32 million disk drives and ended the quarter with some $1.6 billion in cash.
Earlier this month Western Digital paid $65 million to buy Aliso Viejo’s SiliconSystems Inc., a move that signaled its entrance into the market for a new type of drive that has no moving parts, is more durable, saves power and is faster at some tasks than traditional disk drives.
Western Digital said it plans to fold SiliconSystems into a new division called WD solid-state storage, with Michael Hajeck, founder and former chief executive of SiliconSystems, running the unit as a Western Digital vice president.
“Integration into Western Digital is well under way and proceeding according to plan,” Chief Executive John Coyne said in a statement.
Western Digital’s shares were roughly flat in New York afterhours trading on a recent market value of about $5 billion.
The company didn’t give an outlook for the current quarter.
