Bernstein Upgrades Western Digital, Says TurboQuant Won’t Dent Storage Demand

Overview

• Western Digital, which slid after Google’s March 24 TurboQuant reveal, won a Bernstein upgrade to Outperform with a price target raised to $340.
• TurboQuant compresses the key‑value cache used during AI inference by about six times and can speed inference on Nvidia H100 GPUs by up to eight times, but it does not change training loads or model weights.
• Bernstein said hard‑disk demand should see zero impact and NAND effects should be minor, and it lifted Seagate’s target to $620 while keeping Sandisk’s at $1,000.
• Western Digital cut liabilities by swapping 5.8 million Sandisk shares for debt and redeeming 4.75% notes due 2026, moves that helped earn an S&P Global credit upgrade to BBB‑ with a stable outlook.
• Next up is Western Digital’s April 29 earnings report, where analysts project EPS of $2.30 and note 17 recent upward estimate revisions as shares begin to recover from last week’s drop.