After the market closed on Monday, Seagate announced that the company missed market expectations. Revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter 2012 (ended June 30th, 2012) reached $4.48 billion with a net income of $1.06 billion. However, investors punished the stock, dropping it down by almost 8% in after hours trading. For the whole fiscal year 2012, the company reported record revenue of almost $15 billion, 27% higher than in the year before (before the acquisition of Samsung's hard drive business). Those $14.94 billion in revenue were enough to report an annual net income of $3.11 billion or $6.72 EPS (Earnings Per Share). The company's assets in cash and cash equivalents reduced from $2.67 to $1.71 billion, while the company still has $2.86 billion in long term debt.Further details at Bright Side of News.
As such, we expected an interesting conference call and one of first things that we noticed was that Kenneth Massaroni, Executive VP, General Counsel and Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) was missing from the call. While most of analysts were tip-toeing around the issue of whether or not the company will acquire OCZ Technology, the question finally came up. According to Reuters, on that direct question Chief Financial Officer Pat O'Malley stated that Seagate Technology "would be interested in buying an SSD maker that has a "significant" share of the enterprise market." Furthermore, Pat stated that "We don't do any comments on official policy on M&A until it's done," ending the discussion about the upcoming acquisition of a strong player in the booming Solid State market.
Seagate confirms its looking to buy SSD makers
Posted on Tuesday, July 31 2012 @ 21:24 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck