New York, Feb 21, 2026, 13:39 (ET) — Market closed.
Western Digital Corporation shares closed Friday up 0.3% at $285.52 after trading between $278.80 and $297.37, and the stock heads into Monday’s session with balance-sheet moves back in view.
That matters now because Western Digital has turned into a tight read-through on data-center storage demand, where big cloud firms are still adding capacity for AI workloads. At the same time, management has been clearing up the capital structure after the Sandisk separation, a theme that has driven both headline risk and big intraday swings.
For traders, it’s a simple setup. Does debt come down fast enough to keep buybacks and investment moving in the same direction, or does one crowd out the other?
Peers were firmer into the weekend. Seagate ended Friday up about 0.5%, while Micron rose roughly 2.6%.
A Form 4 filed on Feb. 19 showed Brian Scott Davis, Western Digital’s chief sales and marketing officer, sold 10,000 shares on Feb. 17 under a Rule 10b5-1 plan, a preset program that allows insiders to trade on a schedule set in advance. Davis reported 121,792 shares owned after the sales. (SEC)
Sandisk, the former flash unit, said it priced a secondary offering of 5,821,135 shares owned by Western Digital at $545 per share and expected the deal to close Feb. 19. Sandisk said Western Digital was expected to exchange those shares for debt held by affiliates of J.P. Morgan Securities and BofA Securities — a debt-for-equity exchange, or swapping stock for outstanding debt — leaving Western Digital expected to own 1,691,884 Sandisk shares that it plans to dispose of later. (Nasdaq)
Western Digital has said the broader transaction is aimed at raising $3.17 billion to cut debt, which it pegged at $4.69 billion as of January. The company completed the Sandisk spinoff last year and has been repositioning as a pure-play hard disk drive maker. (Reuters)
On its latest earnings call, CEO Irving Tan told analysts the company was “pretty much sold out for calendar 2026,” pointing to firm purchase orders from its top seven customers and longer-term agreements stretching into 2027 and 2028. Management also said it still held about 7.5 million Sandisk shares at the time and planned to monetize them before the one-year separation anniversary, with proceeds used to reduce debt. (Investing)
Buybacks remain the other part of the story. Western Digital said this month its board approved an additional $4 billion for share repurchases. (Reuters)
But the trade cuts both ways. If hyperscalers slow spending or storage pricing softens faster than expected, the stock’s sensitivity to AI capex could flip from tailwind to drag, and the market will start asking how durable the recent margins really are.
The next scheduled catalyst is management’s appearance at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on March 3 at 10:45 a.m. ET. Investors will be listening for any update on 2026 capacity, Sandisk share disposals and the pace of debt paydown. (Westerndigital)
