Stephen D. Milligan
Analyst · Robert Baird
Thanks, John. We are very pleased to report strong financial results for our September quarter, demonstrating our continued ability to deliver value under varying market conditions. There are several dynamics currently limiting market demand: first, global macroeconomic weakness, which is impacting overall IT spending; second, product transitions in the PC industry; and third, the continued adoption of tablets and smartphones, which is muting PC sales growth. These headwinds notwithstanding, the Western Digital team remains focused on creating outstanding economic value, building on our strong multiyear track record. There is a tremendous opportunity as we innovate and enable customers to store, manage and connect the massive and growing amounts of digital data in their personal and professional lives. This opportunity extends well into the future. Looking across our markets, the needs of customers are becoming more diverse, resulting in greater market segmentation. Computing is no longer a general purpose proposition, and that evolution plays to the strengths of Western Digital with our technology breadth, people and product portfolio. Currently, we are focused on 3 key initiatives to broaden our portfolio to meet the evolving needs of our customers, enabling continued value creation: first, the delivery of innovative and cost-effective storage products, including hybrid drives for thin and light mobile devices; second, a portfolio of enterprise products that fit the varying needs of the public and private cloud environments, including high-performance SSD systems and high-performance and large-capacity hard drives with the lowest total cost of ownership; third, providing easy-to-use integrated solutions for the personal cloud environment and our connected lives. We have received very positive customer feedback on our latest differentiated solutions to address these trends. All major PC OEMs have shown strong interest in our 5-millimeter and 7-millimeter hybrid designs as an alternative to solid-state and dual drive configurations. In the cloud environment, our new 7-disk high-capacity sealed drive announcement has been extremely well received, confirming the need to seek better total cost of ownership solutions for this growing market. For the Connected Life, we introduced today the My Passport Enterprise, one of the industry's first portable hard drives designed specifically for use with Microsoft's Windows To Go, enabling corporate customers to provision a fully featured Windows 8 workspace on a USB drive. For fiscal 2013, we remain focused on realizing the $10 EPS target established in July of this year despite a significant change in the underlying industry growth assumptions. We will continue to manage closely those aspects of our business that we control, namely delighting our customers, executing to our product roadmap, remaining diligent with regards to managing costs and expenses and strategically allocating our capital. Looking forward, I am very excited about the future of Western Digital. We have the people, platform, technology and financial resources to continue to invest in growth opportunities while at the same time, returning approximately 50% of our free cash flow to shareholders. Wolfgang will now provide a report on our Q1 performance and our Q2 outlook.