Seagate sales, profit fall; shares decline
Seagate Technology Plc reported sharply lower profit on Wednesday as sales of its computer hard drives and storage devices fell and it recorded restructuring costs as it gears up for a massive share buyback after the failure of a private equity takeover deal.
The world's largest hard drive disk maker said net profit fell to $150 million, or 31 cents per share, compared with $533 million, or $1.03 per share, in the year-ago quarter.
Sales fell 10 percent to $2.7 billion.
Excluding some items such as restructuring costs, it reported earnings of 33 cents per share, matching Wall Street's average estimate.
Seagate's shares fell 3.7 percent in after-hours trading, after falling 3 percent in regular trading on Nasdaq.
The company, which makes a range of disk drives for computers and external storage devices, was in discussions with private equity firms over a potential $9 billion takeover last year, which ultimately fell through.
Instead, the company announced a $2 billion share buyback plan, partially financed by a $750 million debt offering in December.
On Wednesday, the company said it had agreed a $350 million revolving credit line with lenders.
Its report comes the day after rival Western Digital Corp, the world No. 2 hard-drive maker, warned that 6 million to 8 million unused hard drives in the personal computer supply chain could be causing a glut and hurt sales of new drives this quarter.
(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Bernard Orr)
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