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back to article Seagate loses $3bn in a year

Seagate lost $3.09bn in its fiscal year to the end of June, with revenue plummeting 23 per cent to $9.8bn. In its final 2009 quarter it lost $81m, on revenue 19 per cent down at $2.35bn, compared to a profit of $160m a year ago. The bare numbers are horrible but the outlook is much better. The company spent $106m on …

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  1. Neil 7
    Grenade

    Hardly surprising

    They've probably spent most of it on handling drives returned as defective.

    The 1TB+ Seagate drives are suffering from abysmal quality control issues - it wouldn't be a stretch to say that as many as 50% or more of these higher capacity drives will suffer an excessively large number of reallocated sector errors within the first few days of operation, enough to require a replacement (which will of course be with a refurbished drive, one that is just as likely to have the same reallocated sector problem).

    SMART monitoring software will send you nuts by repeatedly warning you about the ever increasing counts.

    Google for "seagate reallocated sector count" to see for yourself - anyone buying a Seagate drive these days should have their head examined, they're just shit.

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  2. Richard Claunch
    FAIL

    The title is misleading!

    This is a sign of the 21st century! In actuality Seagate did not lose $3B! They failed to make the additional $3B PROJECTED by their financial forecast! Of course by saying "We didn't meet our forecast", they won't qualify for any bail-out loans!

    25-30 years ago corporations did not have a position called Chief Financial Officer (CFO). The position was called Comptroller or head accountant. Technology and computers gave rise to the EVIL spreadsheet where accountants could play "what if" games with the financials, thus providing the push to include them in the coroporate management structure with a "Chief" title.

    Business plans are issued on these "what ifs" and they never account for the social dynamics of human interaction. So last July Seagate issued a glorious forcast stating that Seagate would make $12.89B in revenue for the fiscal year. Now 12 months later, the sad truth is they only made $9.08B in revenues. The $3.09B shortfall wasn't LOST, it just wasn't achieved!

    I am getting a little disgusted with all the reporting of how companies losing billions but continue to stay in business! In reality these companies are making a profit, just not the expected profit! Its the REPORTING in the media that sensationalizes the shortfall into a loss.

    Next time how about the truth where is hurts:

    Seagate Fumbles in Reaching Financial GOAL!

    Today Seagate reported that it failed to reach the annual financial forcast of $12.89B in revenues. Financial reporting showed that projections were missed by $3.09B due to worlwide economic slowdowns, mis-management or just missing the boat and failing to make products people really wanted!

    Stop pandering to the corporate world and tell it like it really is!

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  3. Timothy

    I have to agree

    Not just 1 TB hard drives, ho wabout 1.5 TB hard drives as well. And don't get me started on how poor packaging Tiger Direct, Newegg, etc does when shipping hard drives. Used to buy Seagates as WD used to fail miserably, now buying WD as Seagates are failing miserably!

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  4. Kevin Bailey

    As I predicted at the time...

    Their support for LInux was nonexistent - especially during the 1TB disk fiasco.

    Us techies who had to figure out ourselves how to fix Linux boxes were not impressed - and we make the buying decisions. So, how many techies worldwide said - that's it no more seagate?

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  5. A Ahmed

    Firmware defect BRICKS Seagate drives

    A defective firmware in many 500GB+ drives is causing many drive failures too. Seems Seagate initially washed their hands of it and simply provided a firmware update for owners to apply BEFORE they hit the problem and left those with the bricked drives high and dry. But now they are provide a free re-flashing service through their data recovery arm.

    Search the net for "7200.11 SD15"

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  6. Chris Mellor 1

    Not a $3bn loss, a $3.1bn one

    There have been comments that Seagate only lost $81m and not $3bn. To clarify, the $81m loss was for its fourth quarter in the just-closed Seagate fiscal year. For its full fiscal year Seagate said: " For the fiscal year ended July 3, 2009, the company reported disk drive unit shipments of 163.8 million, revenue of $9.8 billion, a net loss of $3.1 billion,..."

    Chris.

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