Western Digital (WDC) Named Among 2025 Best Dividend Stocks with Price Target Raised to $228

Written by Emily J. Thompson, Senior Investment Analyst

WDC+8.96%

Source: Yahoo Finance

Updated: 1h ago

0mins

Source: Yahoo Finance

Dividend Performance Highlight: Western Digital has been named one of the best-performing dividend stocks for 2025, with Morgan Stanley raising its price target from $188 to $228, reflecting the company's strong exposure to cloud capital spending, which is expected to further drive stock price appreciation.
Strong Market Demand: Despite the cyclical nature of the hard disk market, Western Digital has seen continuous improvement in customer demand, with revenue climbing 27% to $2.82 billion in the most recent quarter, indicating enhanced profitability in the data center market, particularly as AI customers demand higher-capacity storage.
Future Growth Expectations: Revenue is projected to rise about 23% in fiscal 2026, with growth expected to slow to around 13% in 2027, yet still indicating ongoing expansion potential, underscoring the company's solid market position in data storage.
Structural Adjustment Impact: Earlier this year, Western Digital spun off its flash memory business into Sandisk, which now has a market value of approximately $35 billion, exceeding half of Western Digital's own valuation, reflecting the strategic restructuring and reassessment of market value in the storage solutions sector.

WDC

$187.7+Infinity%1D

Analyst Views on WDC

Wall Street analysts forecast WDC stock price to rise over the next 12 months. According to Wall Street analysts, the average 1-year price target for WDC is 181.63 USD with a low forecast of 135.00 USD and a high forecast of 250.00 USD. However, analyst price targets are subjective and often lag stock prices, so investors should focus on the objective reasons behind analyst rating changes, which better reflect the company's fundamentals.

19 Analyst Rating

15 Buy

4 Hold

0 Sell

Strong Buy

Current: 172.270

Low

135.00

Averages

181.63

High

250.00

Current: 172.270

Low

135.00

Averages

181.63

High

250.00

Morgan Stanley

Overweight

maintain

$188 -> $228

2025-12-17

Reason

Morgan Stanley

Price Target

$188 -> $228

2025-12-17

maintain

Overweight

Reason

Morgan Stanley raised the firm's price target on Western Digital (WDC) to $228 from $188 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. Among the IT Hardware group, the firm recommends being overweight cloud capex winners, product-cycle beneficiaries such as Apple, and unique assets, while it suggests being underweight stocks with elevated memory exposure - like Dell (DELL) and HP (HPQ) - and is "increasingly more cautious" on memory-exposed names as well, the analyst tells investors in a year-ahead note.

Cantor Fitzgerald

C.J. Muse

Overweight

maintain

$200 -> $250

2025-12-16

Reason

Cantor Fitzgerald

C.J. Muse

Price Target

$200 -> $250

2025-12-16

maintain

Overweight

Reason

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst C.J. Muse raised the firm's price target on Western Digital to $250 from $200 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. The SOX is positioned to lead markets higher after outperforming the S&P by roughly 30 points in CY25, supported by the early stages of the AI era driving demand across compute, networking, memory, and equipment, the analyst tells investors in a research note. While cyclical factors may create mixed signals, the macro backdrop and expected exponential growth in AI infrastructure spending support a long position in the SOX and overweight exposure to AI-related plays into CY26, the firm says.

China Renaissance

initiated

$193

2025-12-05

Reason

China Renaissance

Price Target

$193

2025-12-05

initiated

Reason

China Renaissance initiated coverage of Western Digital with a Buy rating and $193 price target.

Citi

Asiya Merchant

Buy

maintain

$180 -> $200

2025-12-02

Reason

Citi

Asiya Merchant

Price Target

$180 -> $200

2025-12-02

maintain

Buy

Reason

Citi analyst Asiya Merchant raised the firm's price target on Western Digital to $200 from $180 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares. The firm cites the solid supply/demand backdrop in memory, limited production, sustained pricing momentum, and demand visibility now through 2027 for the target increase. Citi believes the acceleration of unstructured data generation from artificial intelligence tools is driving increased demand visibility.

About WDC

Western Digital Corporation is a developer, manufacturer and provider of data storage devices and solutions. It delivers hard disk drives (HDD) solutions for everyone from students, gamers, and home offices to enterprises and public clouds. The Company manufactures, markets, and sells data storage devices and solutions in the United States and in foreign countries through its sales personnel, dealers, distributors, retailers, and subsidiaries. Its portfolio of technology and products addresses multiple end markets: Cloud, Client, and Consumer. Cloud is comprised primarily of products for public or private cloud environments and end customers. Through the Client end market, it provides its original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and channel customers a range of hard drive solutions across personal computer, mobile, gaming, automotive, virtual reality headsets, at-home entertainment, and industrial spaces. The Consumer end market offers a range of retail and other end-user products.

About the author

Emily J. Thompson

Emily J. Thompson, a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) with 12 years in investment research, graduated with honors from the Wharton School. Specializing in industrial and technology stocks, she provides in-depth analysis for Intellectia’s earnings and market brief reports.