New York, Feb 12, 2026, 13:24 EST — Regular session
- Western Digital shares jumped more than 7% and briefly topped $300 in Thursday trading.
- Storage peer Seagate also rose, even as major U.S. indexes slid on a tech-led retreat.
- Investors’ next macro test is Friday’s U.S. CPI report.
Western Digital shares jumped 7.3% to $293.84 on Thursday and touched $306.87 earlier in the session, standing out as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq slid about 1.2% and 1.6%, respectively. (Reuters)
The outperformance comes as investors try to separate AI hype from AI earnings, and that has made the market jumpy. “We see this as a ‘prove it’ year for AI,” said Jack Herr, primary investment analyst at GuideStone Funds, as traders pressed companies to show returns on big spending. (Reuters)
Memory storage names were among the bright spots, even as investors rotated out of tech shares more broadly. Seagate, Western Digital and Sandisk were among the top gainers in the S&P 500, Investopedia reported. (Investopedia)
Seagate shares rose 8.7% to $442.70. NetApp slid 7.9% and Pure Storage fell 6.2%, a reminder that the bid is not hitting every storage ticker the same way.
Western Digital had already posted a strong prior session, closing up 4.26% on Wednesday at $273.74 on volume of about 9.3 million shares, MarketWatch data showed. (MarketWatch)
A fresh boost has come from the AI data-center buildout story, and Western Digital has leaned into it. CFO Kris Sennesael said in an interview that about 80% of cloud storage still relies on hard-disk drives, and the company has pointed investors to targets that include 20% compound annual revenue growth and more than $20 in earnings per share over three to five years. (Investors)
At an Innovation Day event on Feb. 3, Western Digital — now branded as WD — laid out a high-capacity drive roadmap aimed at the same AI-heavy customers. It said a 40-terabyte UltraSMR ePMR drive is in qualification with two hyperscale customers (the largest cloud operators), with volume production planned for the second half of 2026, while HAMR — heat-assisted magnetic recording — is slated for a ramp in 2027 and is targeted to scale to 100TB by 2029. (Western Digital)
WD has also tried to reassure investors it will return cash as it invests. “The expanded $4.0 billion buyback authorization demonstrates our confidence in WD’s future,” CEO Irving Tan said in a Feb. 3 statement. (Western Digital)
But the run-up has also pushed valuation into a harder zone, and the stock’s next swing could be sharp either way. AAII put Western Digital’s P/E at 25.6, above the industry median it cited, and noted at least one analyst downgrade over the past month. (AAII)
For the next catalyst, traders are watching Friday’s U.S. Consumer Price Index report for January, due at 8:30 a.m. ET, with any inflation surprise likely to spill into rate bets and high-multiple tech and hardware names alike. (Bls)
