Western Digital · WDC

Why not

• –Caution:
  What is missing

  Our growth figure is a three-year compound rate, and the year it compounds from — the year to June 2023 — was one in which Western Digital spent more cash than it brought in. There is no compounding out of a negative number, so the rate the whole read leans on would have to be invented rather than computed. The year after it was negative too, so unlike most cases of this kind it does not clear with the next report: the first annual filing whose three-year base is a year Western Digital generated cash is the 2028 one, and the read returns on its own then. The business behind it is in better shape than that sentence suggests — free cash flow was $3.5B in the year to June 2026 — which is exactly why we would rather show nothing than a growth rate we had to invent.