What you need to know
- Western Digital had a good fourth quarter.
- It managed $4.9 billion in revenue, representing a 15% year-over-year (YoY) increase.
- Chia played a part in the company's hard drive success.
Western Digital had a solid fourth quarter that managed to beat analyst expectations. The guesstimates for WD's quarterly performance were $4.53 billion in revenue, but the company managed to shatter that ceiling with $4.9 billion. That's a 15% year-over-year (YoY) jump in gains.
David Goeckeler, the CEO of Western Digital, partially attributed his company's current successes to its hard drive shipments. "I'm excited to announce a record shipment of over 104 exabytes in capacity enterprise hard drives, a 49% increase sequentially," he stated (via SeekingAlpha). He then added an update on the Chia front. "There was also increased demand for hard drives due to Proof-of-space cryptocurrencies such as Chia, which emerged as a new vertical market at the beginning of the quarter."
However, the earnings call chatter didn't just briefly touch on cryptocurrency then move on, like AMD's earnings calls have done when the crypto question comes up. Instead, Chia was a recurring theme throughout WD's breakdown of its quarter and things to come. You can read the full transcript to see the numerous mentions of it, but here's one particularly interesting quote from the call: When asked about Chia's contribution to WD's quarterly results, David replied, "I think the first week of it last quarter, probably a couple $100 million of upside there in the quarter due to Chia."
In other words, WD is measuring the cryptocurrency impact and isn't afraid to dish hard numbers. In fact, it seemed to be taking the crypto question in stride throughout the call. If you're foggy on Chia and want to learn more about it and how it utilizes the best internal hard drives, as well as learn how to farm Chia coin yourself, check out our guides.
