Scotts Valley (CA) – Seagate reported a loss of $81 million on revenue of $2.35 billion for the second quarter of this year. However, the company said that it is seeing signs that the storage market is improving and it is making progress “toward the goal of returning to sustained GAAP profitability as soon as possible.”
Seagate said it shipped 40.6 million hard drives during the quarter and a total of 163.8 million units for the fiscal year ended on July 3, 2009. Revenue for the year was revenue of $9.8 billion, the net loss was $3.1 billion.
“The overall organizational, operational, technical and product progress we have made during the last six months is reflected in our financial results for the June quarter and demonstrates meaningful progress toward the goal of returning to sustained GAAP profitability as soon as possible,” said Steve Luczo, Seagate CEO. “We are also seeing signs that the storage markets are improving and are providing better visibility into the demand environment. Our approach to the September quarter with respect to our production volumes and product mix is to continue to manage our factories with an intense focus on maximizing our return on invested capital while satisfying our customers’ requirements.”
The company remains cautious on its business outlook and mentioned that it is “difficult to predict product demand and other related matters.” For the September quarter, the company is planning for the overall industry demand for disk drives to be between 135 and 140 million units. Seagate expects its CQ3 revenue to be between $2.4 and $2.6 billion. Product development and marketing/administrative costs are expected to decrease to approximately $315 million during the quarter.
