CluenexWestern Digital WDC
Western Digital scores excellent on business quality (8.1 of 10). Here is why, in plain words, and what our sealed record shows.
Why it matters
- What Western Digital does
Western Digital builds flash memory and hard disk drives, selling data storage hardware directly to enterprise data centers, PC makers, and consumers.
- What it does best
Western Digital captures massive scale advantages in flash and hard disk manufacturing, delivering a 48.9% gross margin that outpaces peers like Dell at 19.8%. This cost structure is tough to copy without massive capital.
- The main risk
Cyclical commodity pricing crashes can quickly compress margins if enterprise data center demand cools, directly threatening the strong free cash flow generation that currently anchors the balance sheet.
Quality, check by check
Scored against its own industry, from company filings.
Operating margin reaches 35.6% alongside a 69th-percentile FCF margin, expanding rapidly as high-capacity enterprise storage shipments scale efficiently.
Scale and high-volume manufacturing create a cost advantage locking in enterprise storage buyers, backed by an operating margin sector percentile of 87 that rivals struggle to replicate quickly.
Revenue growth hit 35.7%, jumping to $12.9B as the business accelerates out of prior years' stagnation and outpaces most of its technology sector peers.
Debt-to-equity sits at a low 0.1x with interest coverage at 27.8x, making debt costs a rounding error while free cash flow surged to $3.5B, leaving the balance sheet steadily strengthening.
Insiders
Executives and directors, from SEC Form 4 filings we read ourselves. Open market trades only; grants, option exercises and pre-planned sales left out.
2 sold $3.3M outside pre-planned sales.
Our sealed record on WDC
Verdicts appear here 30 days after we publish them; members see today's. Each one is in the nightly ledger, fingerprinted the night it was made.
The first sealed verdicts appear here on Oct 11, 2026.
Questions
Western Digital scores excellent on the Cluenex quality check (8.1 of 10), measured against its own industry. Profitability is strong, moat fair, growth fast and financial health strong.
In the last 90 days of SEC Form 4 filings: 2 sold $3.3M outside pre-planned sales.
Oct 22, 2026.
See WDC today
- Today's verdict on WDC, and why
- Fair value with cautious, base and optimistic cases
- The exact price that would change the verdict
- Which stocks each signal names, the night it fires
Cite this page: Cluenex, “Western Digital (WDC)”, https://cluenex.com/stocks/wdc/, data as of Oct 10, 2026.