President

Thomas Coughlin

Coughlin Associates

Thematic (Sector/Industry)

<p>High capacity HDDs, particularly nearline drives for enterprise and hyper scale data centers are the one growth area for HDDs going forward.  We project that growth in demand for nearline storage could stop the decline in HDD shipments by 2024-2025.   The growth of capacity-oriented nearline drives will result in more components per drive out to 2025.  We project that total shipments of heads and media will exceed the peak in 2014 by 2024-2025, largely due to the growth of high capacity (many heads and media) hard disk drives.</p>

High capacity HDDs, particularly nearline drives for enterprise and hyper scale data centers are the one growth area for HDDs going forward.  We project that growth in demand for nearline storage could stop the decline in HDD shipments by 2024-2025.   The growth of capacity-oriented nearline drives will result in more components per drive out to 2025.  We project that total shipments of heads and media will exceed the peak in 2014 by 2024-2025, largely due to the growth of high capacity (many heads and media) hard disk drives.

HDD C3Q Results, Continued Decline in Units but Growth in High Capacity HDDs

Equity Bottom-Up

<p style="text-align: start;">Seagate is seeing a tapering off of the nearline HDD buy to support cloud services during the Covid-19 pandemic.  However, sales of these HDDs and mass storage HDDs for video and related big data applications will be continued drivers for sales into calendar 2021.  The company said that 63% of their HDD revenue in C3Q 2020 was from mass capacity HDDs, including nearline HDDs.  The company also expects some consumer rebound for HDDs in 2021.  In the long run, the conversion to majority mass capacity HDDs will raise ASPs and by 2024-2025 start to increase total HDD unit shipments, further driving revenue and profitability.</p>

Seagate is seeing a tapering off of the nearline HDD buy to support cloud services during the Covid-19 pandemic.  However, sales of these HDDs and mass storage HDDs for video and related big data applications will be continued drivers for sales into calendar 2021.  The company said that 63% of their HDD revenue in C3Q 2020 was from mass capacity HDDs, including nearline HDDs.  The company also expects some consumer rebound for HDDs in 2021.  In the long run, the conversion to majority mass capacity HDDs will raise ASPs and by 2024-2025 start to increase total HDD unit shipments, further driving revenue and profitability.

Seagate:  Long Term Opportunities with Mass Storage HDDs

<p>Breaking up WDC into a separate HDD and flash memory businesses could create two viable storage companies, that over time will provide value to very different, but potentially symbiotic, uses.  The HDD business will become enterprise and especially data center focused, while an NAND flash business will seek to gain market share as a way to moderate and better survive the NAND flash boom/bust cycles.</p>

Breaking up WDC into a separate HDD and flash memory businesses could create two viable storage companies, that over time will provide value to very different, but potentially symbiotic, uses.  The HDD business will become enterprise and especially data center focused, while an NAND flash business will seek to gain market share as a way to moderate and better survive the NAND flash boom/bust cycles.

Potential WDC Breakup, Positive Implications

TMT & Consumer Independent Equity Research Analyst, Obex Capital Research

Aaron Gabin

TMT & Consumer Independent Equity Research Analyst

TMT & Consumer Independent Equity Research

Obex Capital Research

“Obex” is Latin for Barriers to Entry. Obex Capital Management’s investment philosophy is driven by an intense focus on which business model’s Barriers to Entry are able to withstand the ever increasing competitive disruption in the TMT and Consumer Sectors.

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<p>As we head into earnings next week, we note attractive setups for Snap and Microsoft from data that came out this week, along with a very bullish presentation at Crowdstrike's user conference.</p>
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<p>Obex’s fundamental research process is focused on secular change in the TMT and Consumer sectors. We seek to differentiate between fundamental business analysis and security analysis. Before deciding if a security’s pricing and positioning merit a long or short position, we analyze the four pillars of business fundamentals (Secular Factors, TAM, Competitive Advantage, Business Model) in order to determine if this is a “good” or “not so good” opportunity.</p>
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As we head into earnings next week, we note attractive setups for Snap and Microsoft from data that came out this week, along with a very bullish presentation at Crowdstrike's user conference.




Obex’s fundamental research process is focused on secular change in the TMT and Consumer sectors. We seek to differentiate between fundamental business analysis and security analysis. Before deciding if a security’s pricing and positioning merit a long or short position, we analyze the four pillars of business fundamentals (Secular Factors, TAM, Competitive Advantage, Business Model) in order to determine if this is a “good” or “not so good” opportunity.




TMT Weekly:  3 Things that Stood Out The Week of 10/16/​​​​2020

<p>Continued development of HDDs, particularly increasing storage capacity on HDD disks is the key to retaining a competitive advantage for HDDs over SSDs for mass storage in data centers.  Seagate’s CORTX open source object storage software, combined with their scalable Lyve Drive Racks and advanced HDDs could provide upside for Seagate selling into the high margin enterprise and data center markets.</p>

Continued development of HDDs, particularly increasing storage capacity on HDD disks is the key to retaining a competitive advantage for HDDs over SSDs for mass storage in data centers.  Seagate’s CORTX open source object storage software, combined with their scalable Lyve Drive Racks and advanced HDDs could provide upside for Seagate selling into the high margin enterprise and data center markets.

Seagate’s HAMR HDDs, CORTX and Lyve Drive Rack: Positive Enablers

United States

Seagate Technology Holdings Public Limited Company offers computer hardware products. The Company designs, manufactures, and markets hard disk drives for enterprise applications, client compute applications, client non-compute applications, personal data backup systems, portable external storage systems and digital media systems.

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Seagate (STX US)

HDD C3Q Results, Continued Decline in Units but Growth in High Capacity HDDs

HDD Annual Shipments in continued decline, high capacity HDD shipments expected to grow. C3Q benefited from consumer sales and continued capacity...

Thomas Coughlin

Seagate: Long Term Opportunities with Mass Storage HDDs

Seagate Technology quarterly results show 63% of revenue from Mass Capacity HDDs and long term mass capacity HDD growth, demonstrating medium and...

Thomas Coughlin

Potential WDC Breakup, Positive Implications

WDC may be considering breaking up its HDD and NAND flash business. Find out how these separate businesses might fare on their own.

Thomas Coughlin

TMT Weekly: 3 Things that Stood Out The Week of 10/16/2020

Datapoints supportive of upside to earnings for Microsoft and Snapchat this past week, plus an ever expanding TAM justifies Crowdstrike's valuation.

Aaron Gabin

Seagate’s HAMR HDDs, CORTX and Lyve Drive Rack: Positive Enablers

Continued development of HDDs, particularly increasing storage capacity on HDD disks is the key to retaining a competitive advantage for HDDs over...

Thomas Coughlin

Price Gauge

52-week Range

Market Cap (USDm)

P/E

Dividend (Yield)

HDD C3Q Results, Continued Decline in Units but Growth in High Capacity HDDs

HDD Annual Shipments in continued decline, high capacity HDD shipments expected to grow. C3Q benefited from consumer sales and continued capacity...

Thomas Coughlin

Seagate: Long Term Opportunities with Mass Storage HDDs

Seagate Technology quarterly results show 63% of revenue from Mass Capacity HDDs and long term mass capacity HDD growth, demonstrating medium and...

Thomas Coughlin

Potential WDC Breakup, Positive Implications

WDC may be considering breaking up its HDD and NAND flash business. Find out how these separate businesses might fare on their own.

Thomas Coughlin

TMT Weekly: 3 Things that Stood Out The Week of 10/16/​​​​2020

Datapoints supportive of upside to earnings for Microsoft and Snapchat this past week, plus an ever expanding TAM justifies Crowdstrike's valuation.

Aaron Gabin

Seagate’s HAMR HDDs, CORTX and Lyve Drive Rack: Positive Enablers

Continued development of HDDs, particularly increasing storage capacity on HDD disks is the key to retaining a competitive advantage for HDDs over...

Thomas Coughlin

TMT Weekly: 3 Things that Stood Out The Week of 10/16/2020