Western Digital Corporation and sTec, Inc. announced today that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which sTec, Inc., an early innovator in enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs), will be acquired by HGST, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Western Digital. sTec will be acquired for approximately $340 million in cash, which equates to $6.85 per share. This represents approximately $207 million in enterprise value, net of sTec's cash as of March 31, 2013.

The pending acquisition augments HGST's existing solid-state storage capabilities, accelerating its ability to expand its participation in the rapidly growing area of enterprise SSDs. HGST remains committed to its highly successful joint development program with Intel Corp. and will continue to deliver current and future SAS-based SSD products with Intel.

HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and now a Western Digital company,) continues to push technology innovation by offering the highest storage density (MB/mm³) of any hard disk drive (HDD) today. The new Travelstar 5K1500 is the industry's first 9.5 mm, 1.5 TB mobile hard drive and features the industry's highest capacity in a standard 9.5 mm design. Built on HGST's proven platform for quality and reliability, the Travelstar 5K1500 delivers high shock protection, low power and solid performance to meet the growing demands for a variety of market segments, including notebooks, external hard drives, gaming consoles and all-in-one desktop PCs.

The HGST three-platter Travelstar 5K1500 offers 50 percent more capacity than currently shipping 1 TB 2.5-inch 9.5 mm HDDs and 200 percent more capacity than single-disk 500 GB 7 mm or 5 mm 2.5-inch HDDs, making them ideal for capacity-hungry devices. With better PCMark Vantage and PCMark 7 performance than currently shipping two-platter HGST 5,400 RPM models, all Travelstar 5K1500 drives ship with a 32 MB cache buffer and 6 Gbps SATA interface.

HGST today announced the industry's fastest and most advanced enterprise-class, multi level cell (MLC) SAS SSD family - the Ultrastar SSD800MH, Ultrastar SSD800MM and Ultrastar SSD1000MR. From the market share leader in enterprise SAS/FC SSDs, these HGST drives are the first to double today's SAS interface speed.

Designed for the most demanding applications where "hot" data is accessed frequently, such as high-frequency trading, online banking, cloud computing, online gaming, and big data analytics, HGST's new 12 Gb/s SAS SSDs help increase input/output per second (IOPS) and improve response times to mission-critical data in cloud and traditional IT datacenters environments.

HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and now a Western Digital company, NASDAQ: WDC) is leading the disk drive industry to the forefront in nanolithography, long the exclusive purview of semiconductor manufacturers, by creating and replicating minute features that will allow the doubling of hard disk drive (HDD) density in future disk drives.

HGST Labs announced today they have combined two innovative nanotechnologies -- self-assembling molecules and nanoimprinting -- to create large areas of dense patterns of magnetic islands only 10 billionths of a meter (10 nanometers) wide. These features are only about 50 atoms wide and some 100,000 times thinner than a human hair.

HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and now a Western Digital company, NASDAQ: WDC) today announced the industry's highest-capacity 10,000 RPM, enterprise-class hard drive - the Ultrastar C10K1200. Providing a capacity extension to HGST's proven Ultrastar C10K900 product line, the new 2.5-inch Ultrastar C10K1200 features a SAS 6Gb/s interface for reliable data throughput, a 64MB cache buffer for optimized read/write response time, and a fast 10K rotational speed for reliable high-performance computing. All this, combined with the drive's low power, high capacity and high performance attributes, results in higher density servers, blades and network storage arrays that helps reduce space requirements, lowers cooling costs and improves total cost of ownership (TCO).

Increasing storage needs, shrinking floor space and budgets, and reducing power and cooling are just a few challenges that datacenter managers face today, making it challenging to scale and sustain business growth. Whether building datacenters for public clouds, private clouds or traditional datacenters, adopting the right tiered storage strategy delivers greater efficiencies in terms of reliability, performance, capacity and power, and can make a vast difference in the ability to lower TCO.

G-Technology, a leading developer of innovative storage solutions engineered specifically to meet the needs of the content creation and Apple Mac communities, today announced that it is now shipping its popular G-Technology G-DRIVE mini and G-RAID mini external storage solutions with new high-quality, 1 TB, 2.5-inch 7,200 RPM hard disk drives from HGST.

"Today, new kinds of devices and media formats require considerably more interface bandwidth, capacity and higher transfer rates to move, store and edit data quickly. The new Travelstar drive is the first and only 7,200 RPM, 1 TB, 9.5 mm 2.5-inch drive, and delivers the highest 7,200 RPM performance in PCMark Vantage testing," said Mike Williams , vice president and general manager, G-Technology/HGST Branded Business. "Now incorporated into our well-known G-RAID mini and G-DRIVE mini solutions, consumers and content creators can continue to receive unmatched performance, style and reliability in their G-Technology storage solutions."

HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and now a Western Digital company) today announced a new helium-filled hard disk drive (HDD) platform, which is at the forefront of advanced technology for increasing capacity and significantly reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) for enterprise and cloud customers.

With products expected in 2013, the new platform enables HGST to go beyond its award-winning five-platter design, providing a path for higher capacity storage and lower customer TCO for years to come. With industry-wide challenges in scaling current areal density technologies, this new platform allows HGST to design seven-platter drives in a standard 3.5-inch form factor that will cost-effectively extend the capacity and cost-per-gigabyte curve for many product generations to come. In addition, the inherent benefits of the platform, including the helium fill, allow HGST to significantly improve datacentre TCO on virtually every level: capacity, power, cooling and storage density.

Western Digital Corp. today announced that Steve Milligan will become chief executive officer of the company on January 2, 2013, succeeding John Coyne, who is retiring on that same date. Milligan, 49, is currently president of Western Digital and will retain the title of president when he becomes CEO. Following Coyne's retirement, Milligan will be appointed to the Western Digital board of directors.

"We are grateful to John Coyne for his many years of dedication and strong leadership," said Tom Pardun, chairman of the board. "He and his team have strategically positioned the company at the center of the storage industry, as a consistently profitable market and technology leader well positioned to address the tremendous opportunities in the changing digital world.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today reported revenue of $12.5 billion and net income of $1.6 billion, or $6.58 per share for fiscal year 2012, compared to fiscal 2011 revenue of $9.5 billion and net income of $726 million, or $3.09 per share. On a non-GAAP basis, fiscal 2012 net income was $2.1 billion or $8.61 per share, compared to fiscal 2011 net income of $770 million or $3.28 per share. Both the GAAP and non-GAAP fiscal 2012 results include results from the company's newly acquired HGST subsidiary from the acquisition date of March 8 through the end of fiscal 2012.

For its fourth fiscal quarter ended June 29, 2012, the company reported revenue of $4.8 billion, hard-drive shipments of 71.0 million and net income of $745 million, or $2.87 per share. On a non-GAAP basis, net income was $872 million, or $3.35 per share.2 In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $2.4 billion, net income of $158 million, or $0.67 per share, and shipped 53.8 million hard drives. Non-GAAP net income in the year-ago quarter was $193 million, or $0.81 per share.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced the appointments of Tim Leyden and Mike Cordano as presidents of the company's WD and HGST subsidiaries, respectively, reporting to Steve Milligan, president of Western Digital Corporation. Milligan reports to John Coyne, who continues in his role as chief executive officer of Western Digital Corporation.

Before the acquisition of HGST by Western Digital in March 2012, Leyden served as chief operating officer of Western Digital and Cordano served as executive vice president, sales and marketing and president, branded business division of HGST.

G-Technology today announced a new line of portable and desktop USB 3.0 storage solutions for a broad range of users from consumers to audio/video professionals. Given the brand's strength in the content creation and Apple Mac community, G-Technology is well positioned to move the Mac industry forward in leveraging high-capacity, high-performance USB 3.0 drives across a variety of customer segments, all while delivering one of the industry's most respected external storage platforms with proven quality, reliability and performance.

Today, new kinds of devices and media formats require considerably more interface bandwidth and higher transfer rates to move, store and edit data quickly. Backward compatible with USB 2.0, G-Technology's USB 3.0 drives deliver speeds 10 times faster than USB 2.0 and six times faster than FireWire 800. This means that users can now transfer two full-length movies from a G-Technology USB 3.0 drive to a computer in minutes.

Western Digital Corp. today announced that it is transferring its stock exchange listing to NASDAQ Global Select Market from the New York Stock Exchange. WD shares will begin trading on the NASDAQ exchange beginning June 1, 2012, and the ticker symbol will remain WDC.

"This is part of a new beginning for the new WD following our recent acquisition of HGST to become one of the world's leading storage solutions providers," said John Coyne, chief executive officer. "WD is focused on achieving sustained profitable growth and delivering value to our customers and shareholders. Listing our shares with NASDAQ provides us with a cost-effective stock listing and excellent services and public exposure."

Western Digital Corp. today announced that it has appointed Kensuke Oka and Masahiro Yamamura to its board of directors, effective May 17, 2012. Mr. Oka is president and CEO of Hitachi America, Ltd., and Mr. Yamamura is corporate officer, general manager of the Semiconductor Business Division of Hitachi, Ltd.

"The additions of Mr. Oka and Mr. Yamamura offer our leadership team vital insight as we operate WD and HGST as independent subsidiaries in the competitive hard drive industry," said Thomas Pardun, WD chairman of the board. "Both have deep executive management experience leading operations in the electronics and industrial systems industries, primarily for Hitachi, providing new perspectives to WD as we continue our focus on sustained profitable growth."