Western Digital shares climbed 16.8% in the most recent trading session, trading at more than twice their 30-day average volume. The sudden uptick represented roughly 30 million additional shares exchanging hands compared to a typical day. Such volume-driven moves often signal institutional interest, and several large asset managers reported adding to WDC positions in intraday filings.

Analysts have increased full-year earnings estimates for WDC by an average of 8 cents per share over the past two weeks. Of the 18 firms covering the stock, 12 raised their 2026 profit forecasts, reflecting expectations for margin expansion in Western Digital’s flash and hard disk drive segments. Consensus operating margin for fiscal 2026 now stands at 16.5%, up from 15.8% a month ago.

Investor sentiment around Western Digital has been buoyed by growing demand for high-capacity storage in AI model training. Recent reports from SK Hynix and Samsung indicate planned price increases for NAND flash products, which could translate into higher revenue per gigabyte for WDC. Storage hardware orders from major cloud and data-center providers rose 22% year-over-year in Q4, with Western Digital securing approximately 40% of those incremental contracts.

While flash memory remains a focal point, rising DRAM contract prices have spurred renewed interest in cost-effective hard disk drives for large-scale archiving. DRAM contract prices have climbed 12% since the start of the quarter, and customers are projected to shift 15 exabytes of cold storage demand back to HDDs over the next two quarters. Western Digital, which holds roughly 44% share of the global HDD market, stands to benefit from these dynamics as storage buyers seek to optimize overall cost per terabyte.