Q: Steve, you guys have had quite an eventful year. How’s the recovery from the floods in Thailand going?
A: Well, it’s still happening. There are still a lot of issues, and the industry’s not being rebuilt the way it was. People just don’t understand that when you have that kind of structural damage to a supply chain it doesn’t get rebuilt the way it was. It will be rebuilt for the future, not for the past. And a lot of capital has to flow back in to rebuild all the assets that were destroyed. There’s a long lead time on a lot of that equipment. So it is still recovering. It is getting better. Certain market segments this quarter felt like they were coming into balance. Others are still massively short and will be through the summer. Overall, the recovery is still pegging pretty close to what we said initially which is kind of remarkable, [with industry-wide production of] 120 million units for the December quarter, 140 million for March, 160 million for June, 180 million for September. It seems like we are going to be within spitting distance of all of those.
Seagate CEO interviewed at Forbes
Posted on Tuesday, April 17 2012 @ 22:25 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck