Western Digital's fiscal first-quarter 2027 results, released in the Oct. 22 session, beat Wall Street's forecasts, according to the earnings call transcript. The investor slides accompanying the report show cloud revenue reaching 88% of total sales, with margins surging as the company leans harder into enterprise storage for data centers.
Despite the beat, shares fell after the earnings call. Neither the transcript nor the investor slides make clear why a quarter with record margins and an 88% cloud mix produced a stock decline rather than a rally — that gap is unresolved.
The result lands the same week The Motley Fool published a separate piece questioning whether Sandisk, the flash-memory company spun off from Western Digital, is a buy after a 3,700% run — a reminder that storage stocks have swung between boom and bust before, even when near-term numbers look strong.
What would clarify this is Western Digital's next quarterly guidance: if cloud revenue mix holds above 85% and margins stay near this quarter's level while the stock still lags, the drop likely reflects valuation or guidance concerns rather than the headline numbers themselves.