The manufacturer of hard drives Seagate Technology published a report on work in the third quarter of fiscal year 2017. The company's sales were below market expectations, which triggered the collapse of quotations. Vendor stopped sharing data on HDD shipments as a result of a prolonged slowdown in the market.

For the three-month reporting period, closed on March 31, 2017, Seagate's revenue was $ 2.67 billion from $ 2.6 billion a year ago. The company returned to profit, fixing it at $ 194 million. In January-March 2016 there was a loss of $ 21 million.

Adjusted earnings that do not take into account a number of one-time incomes and expenses reached $ 1.1 per share, while analysts surveyed by FactSet expected this income at $ 1.07 per share. However, revenue did not reach the average forecast of Wall Street (2.71 billion dollars).

On the day of publication of the financial report, Seagate shares fell in price by 17%. On the eve of this fall, quotes of the company jumped by 32% compared to a year ago and reached the highest level since September 2015, notes the publication MarketWatch.

Weak growth in Seagate sales is largely due to the low demand for personal computers. According to Gartner, in January-March 2017, manufacturers released a total of 62.18 million desktops and laptops, which is 2.4% less than a year ago. Quarterly market volume fell below 63 million units for the first time since 2007.

It is interesting that after a long drop in the supply of hard drives Seagate stopped publishing information about the number of produced HDD. In the second financial quarter, shipments of storage were reduced to 39.9 million units from 46 million units a year earlier.

The Seagate report only reports that the total capacity of hard drives delivered to the market in January-March 2017 reached 65.5 Ebytes versus 55.6 E by the results of the same period of the previous year. Average HDD capacity was 1.

8 TB.

Most of the revenue from HDD sales - 66% in the third financial quarter - Seagate brought OEM-contracts for the supply of products to manufacturers. The shares of retail and distribution channel were 15% and 19% respectively.

Corporate HDD shipments accounted for 36% of the US manufacturer's earnings against 37% a year ago. "Reuters" agency notes that Seagate focused on cloud products, as companies cut costs for traditional storage systems.