Shares of Lake Forest disk drive maker Western Digital Corp. jumped Wednesday after rival Seagate Technology LLC reported better than expected results for the September quarter.
Western Digital’s stock rose as much as 5%. It counts a recent market value of nearly $6 billion.
“In general, expectations are good heading into the (earnings) report tomorrow,” said Jeff Brickman, analyst with UBS in New York. “We saw positive results out of Seagate indicating great demand and we expect Western Digital to follow suit.”
Seagate said it had higher than expected demand during the most recent quarter and beat analysts’ expectations.
Western Digital is set to report results for the quarter ended Sept. 28 on Nov. 1. Analysts are looking for a profit of about $124 million and sales of nearly $2 billion.
The company is likely to get a boost from a general upswing in demand for computers, a big driver for tech companies.
New business in Asia and the weaker dollar also count in Western Digital’s favor, industry watchers say.
Worldwide PC shipments are on track to grow more than 12% this year and 11% in 2008, according to a report from San Jose-based market researcher Gartner Inc.
More than half of the shipments are going to customers in emerging markets, the report showed.
