Western Digital Stock Tripled: What Changed And What Did Not

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Western Digital (WDC) stock rose 217.9% during the year ended October 28, 2026, outpacing a 13.7% gain for the S&P 500. The period closed six days after the data storage company released its fiscal Q1 2027 report on October 22, 2026. At the time, management said the company still saw strong demand and favorable pricing across all its end markets. So what pushed Western Digital stock that far in a year?

Investors Bid Up Western Digital On Pricing News

Western Digital's two largest gains of the year arrived alongside news about prices. The stock rose 16.8% on January 6, 2026, when news reports said investors were betting that high DRAM prices might lead to more demand for hard disks. Its next largest gain of 16.1% occurred on June 15, 2026, as reports said investors were warming to the pricing potential of storage companies.

Shares of fellow hard disk maker Seagate Technology rose 215% over the same year, a sign that the market repriced storage makers as a group rather than Western Digital alone. The climb did not run in a straight line. Western Digital shares reached their highest close of the year at $745.99 on June 18, 2026, before falling to $396.42 by October 28, placing them 47% below that high.

Western Digital Earns Far More On Each Sale

Western Digital generated $4.38 billion in revenue during fiscal Q1 2027, marking a 55.5% increase from a year earlier. Management gave two reasons for the growth: the company shipped more storage and realized better prices. Storage capacity shipments, measured in exabytes, grew 22% from the prior year. The average price per terabyte, which is what a customer pays for each unit of storage, climbed even faster. It rose by 28%, up from growth in the high teens the quarter before. Cloud customers accounted for most of these sales, with management stating that cloud revenue made up 88% of total revenue.

Western Digital also kept far more of each sale. Operating margin rose from 28.2% in fiscal Q1 2026 to 47.7% in fiscal Q1 2027, rising in each quarter in between. Over the twelve months to October 2, 2026, operating margin was 40.7%. This rate was higher than at any other quarter end dating back to fiscal Q2 2017.

What You Pay For Western Digital's Earnings

You pay about the same for each dollar of Western Digital's earnings as a year earlier: earnings rose about as fast as the stock price. The shares traded at 16.2 times the company's twelve-month earnings at the end of September 2025, and at 16.8 times at the end of September 2026. What changed was the price of each dollar of sales. That figure rose from 4.1 times to 11.5 times between the same two dates, as each dollar of sales came to earn more.

Over the twelve months to October 2, 2026, net income of $9.9 billion ran well above operating income of $5.89 billion. This means part of those earnings came from outside the operating business. A year earlier, the two metrics were about level, with net income at $2.56 billion and operating income at $2.59 billion. So you now pay more for each dollar of operating income. When the company reports in January 2027, the figure to watch is Western Digital's operating income, which stood at $2.09 billion in fiscal Q1 2027.

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