After 8 years of possibly fond memories, Western Digital and SanDisk are taking a little break.
During their earnings call today, Western Digital announced that they were going to split off their flash memory business from their traditional hard drive business. They decided to do this to allow SanDisk to “realize its full value”.
SanDisk was acquired by Western Digital back in 2016 for $19 billion. The separation, scheduled for the second half of 2024, will allow SanDisk to act as a separate company again. This will appear to send the merger back in time.
Our HDD and Flash businesses are both well positioned to capitalize on the data storage industry’s significant market dynamics. Given current constraints, it has become clearer to the Board in recent weeks, that delivering a stand-alone separation is the right next step.”
David Goeckeler, CEO, Western Digital
This move seems to be motivated by revenue dropping 26% year over year as both hard drive and flash storage sales fell. Recently, we saw WD offer flash storage for the ROG Ally and Steam Deck. They also joined Seagate in selling Expansion Cards for the Xbox Series X|S.
It also appears that there was another flash memory deal on the table. Japanese company, Kioxia, was in talks to merge with Western Digital, but those talks fell through. Looks like everyone dodged a bullet there.
It’s a bummer those sales dropped, though. I’m normally always in the market for storage, but not so much lately.
Source: The Verge
