TLDR
- Western Digital (WDC) hit an all-time high of $489.64, with the stock trading around $499.25 and a market cap of $165.45 billion.
- Fiscal Q3 2026 EPS came in at $2.72, beating the $2.36 estimate; revenue of $3.34 billion topped the $3.23 billion forecast.
- The company announced a 20% dividend hike, boosting investor confidence alongside the earnings beat.
- 14 of 16 analysts maintain a buy rating on WDC, and 17 analysts revised earnings estimates upward.
- Sector peers Micron and SanDisk also gained, with Micron up 6% and SanDisk up 42% in May so far.
Western Digital hit an all-time high of $489.64 on Monday, with the stock climbing roughly 7% to trade around $499.25. The move pushed the company’s market cap to $165.45 billion and capped a 1-year total return of 993%.
Western Digital Corporation, WDC
The catalyst was a blowout fiscal third-quarter earnings report. Western Digital posted adjusted EPS of $2.72, well ahead of the $2.36 Wall Street expected. That compares to $1.36 per share in the same quarter a year ago — a clean double year-over-year.
Revenue came in at $3.34 billion, up 45% year-over-year and ahead of the $3.23 billion consensus. Both figures also beat the company’s own January guidance, which had projected EPS of $2.15–$2.45 and revenue of $3.1–$3.3 billion.
Adding fuel to the fire, Western Digital announced a 20% dividend hike alongside the results. That kind of move signals management confidence in the durability of earnings growth.
Of 16 analysts covering the stock, 14 currently have a buy rating. Seventeen analysts have revised their earnings estimates upward heading into the next period.
AI Storage Demand Drives the Rally
The broader story here is AI infrastructure spending. Cloud providers and hyperscalers are scaling up data centers at pace, and that’s driving demand for high-capacity hard disk drives — one of Western Digital’s core product lines.
As AI models grow and inference workloads expand, the volumes of data being stored and processed are rising fast. Western Digital has been positioning its high-capacity storage products to capture that demand.
The company also executed a share exchange with institutional investors, swapping 653,203 SanDisk shares for 1,865,801 shares of its own common stock, with settlement expected May 7, 2026.
InvestingPro’s analysis notes the stock currently looks overvalued relative to its Fair Value estimate, a flag worth watching given the pace of the run-up.
Micron and SanDisk Also Move Higher
The rally wasn’t isolated to Western Digital. Micron surged 6% in the session and is up 53% in May. The company has been a major beneficiary of demand for high-bandwidth memory used in AI servers.
SanDisk gained 0.2% on the day but has climbed 42% in May. Its BiCS8 quad-level cell product is currently in qualification with two major hyperscalers. The company also extended its joint venture with Kioxia through December 2034.
Micron is expected to deliver revenue and earnings growth of over 100% each for its fiscal year ending August 2026.
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