Sarmad, I wondered why STX was "jumping" this morning, and then I ran across this article.
<<Seagate Named 2006 Company of the Year by Forbes Magazine Hard Drive Leader Singled out for Operational Excellence, Market Leadership, Innovation and Efficiency
Monday Jan 09 2006 08:03:53 EST
SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif., Jan. 9, 2006 (Canada NewsWire via COMTEX) --
Seagate Technology (NYSE: STX) today announced it has been honored with the title of "2006 Company of the Year" in the January 9 issue of Forbes Magazine. In selecting Seagate as its cover story, Forbes lauds the company's performance against that of 1,000 other publicly traded companies and ranked Seagate as the best of the best.
According to Forbes, Seagate is the biggest and most efficient stand-alone hard-drive maker in the world. Its $925 million net for the past 12 months was three times what its two nearest competitors earned, combined. Its revenue in 2005 climbed 21% to $7.5 billion ... For 2006 analysts expect sales to approach $9 billion. By redefining storage as a sexy, high-growth, high-return business, Seagate earns its title as the Forbes Company of the Year.
"This accolade is a tribute to the thousands of Seagate employees around the world who have worked to put hundreds of millions of our hard drives in everything from notebook computers and PCs to servers, music players, TVs, gaming consoles, digital cameras and cars," said Bill Watkins, Seagate president and chief executive officer. "They have made Seagate not only the leader in hard drives, but now recognized as one of the best, most innovative and most efficient companies in the world."
"But I would add that the real story for Seagate isn't this year, it is four-five years from now," Watkins said. "That's when I believe Seagate will really start reaching its true potential. We are not a company that stands pat, but rather continues to push ourselves to do better ... for our customers, our shareholders, and each other."
Forbes Magazine highlighted the growing consumer electronics market as a particular area of continuing growth and opportunity for the company: Seagate is riding the world's gadget boom. Its 1-inch drives are the archives for cameras and MP3 players. Next year they are headed for cell phones. Slightly larger drives are going into Xboxes and TiVos and, starting next year, into the dash of your car. And before long there will be a big, honking Seagate terabyte drive in your closet or on your desktop, a trillion bytes, enough to hold half a million photos.>> |
