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Western Digital ( WDC ) completed its $16 billion acquisition of SanDisk, creating a formidable competitor in both disk drives and flash-chip storage. SanDisk is a leading provider of chips used for data storage in a wide variety of devices, including smartphones, tablets and PCs. The deal will help SanDisk, which has a strong retail business, move up the ladder to make bigger sales to businesses and other enterprise customers, the market where Western Digital is strongest. Western Digital gets the ability to offer chip-based storage in areas where its disk drive technology is losing ground. Western Digital didn’t provide updated guidance with its announcement of the deal’s closure. “This is disappointing, as the company indicated on its earnings call, perhaps unintentionally, that it planned to provide updated June guidance when the deal closed,” Pacific Crest Securities analyst Weston Twigg wrote in a research note. Western Digital did say that it would provide guidance in the “near term.” Twigg said Western Digital should remain well positioned in its core hard disk drive business, though disk drive revenue will decline over the next five years as non-volatile memory and software-optimized storage products gain. “Western Digital’s acquisition of SanDisk should help position it for these shifts,” Twigg wrote. Western Digital and SanDisk had combined revenue of about $20 billion in 2015. Western Digital is the largest provider of disk drives, ahead of Seagate Technology ( STX ). “This transformational combination creates a media-agnostic leader in storage technology with a robust portfolio of products and solutions that will address a wide range of applications in almost all of the world’s computing and mobile devices,” Western Digital CEO Steve Milligan said in Friday’s press release announcing the acquisition had closed. Sanjay Mehrotra, co-founder and CEO of SanDisk, will serve as a member of the Western Digital board of directors. Western Digital stock was down 2.5%, near 35, in late-afternoon trading in the stock market today , at a more than three-year low. Seagate stock was up 1.5%, near 19, after touching a four-year low on Thursday. Scalper1 News
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