Seagate Technology reported financial results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year ended July 3, 2020.
“The June quarter was led by robust cloud and data center demand, which drove record exabyte shipments for our nearline mass capacity drives and strongly contributed to the Company’s overall revenue and solid free cash flow generation. However, continued economic uncertainty and COVID-19 related disruptions impacted demand in other key end markets including video and image applications, mission critical and consumer markets and also impacted profitability as we incurred higher logistics and labor costs which together weighed on our fourth quarter results,” said Dave Mosley, Seagate’s chief executive officer.
“We are focused on managing the business well and executing on what we can control. Fiscal 2020 marked a strong year of progress as we grew mass capacity storage revenue by 25% and increased our overall revenue. We executed our technology roadmap, strengthened our balance sheet and delivered on our capital return program. Entering fiscal year 2021, the level of macro uncertainty remains high and we will continue to carefully manage our cash and expenses. However, we anticipate demand across our end markets to improve within the next six months and currently model revenue to be fairly flat in fiscal year 2021, supported by the strength of our mass capacity product portfolio. Longer-term, the unabated growth in data at the edge and in the cloud is driving secular demand for mass capacity storage and we believe Seagate’s financial strength and innovative product portfolio position us well for these trends.”
The Company generated $388 million in cash flow from operations and $274 million in free cash flow during the fiscal fourth quarter 2020. For fiscal year 2020, the Company generated $1.7 billion in cash flow from operations and $1.1 billion in free cash flow. Seagate maintained a healthy balance sheet and during the fiscal fourth quarter 2020, the Company paid cash dividends of $168 million and repurchased 1.1 million ordinary shares for $55 million. The Company restructured debt, increasing average debt maturity to nearly 7years and reduced the amount payable in the next two fiscal years to approximately 6% of principal debt balance. The Company ended the fiscal year with cash and cash equivalents of $1.7 billion. There were 257 million ordinary shares issued and outstanding as of the end of the fiscal year.
All periods presented exclude share-based compensation from non-GAAP results. For a detailed reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results, see accompanying financial tables.
In the fiscal fourth quarter of 2019, results reflect a tax benefit of $702 million primarily due to a one-time deferred tax benefit resulting from a release of a valuation allowance related primarily to our U.S. deferred tax assets, which is reflected in GAAP Net Income, but excluded from Non-GAAP Net Income. This was driven by improvements in the Company’s profitability outlook in the U.S. including our efforts to structurally and operationally align our enterprise data solutions business with the rest of the Company.
Seagate has issued a Supplemental Financial Information document, which is available on Seagate’s Investor Relations website at investors.seagate.com.
Quarterly Cash Dividend
The Board of Directors of the Company (the “Board”) declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.65 per share, which will be payable on October 7, 2020 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on September 23, 2020. The payment of any future quarterly dividends will be at the discretion of the Board and will be dependent upon Seagate’s financial position, results of operations, available cash, cash flow, capital requirements and other factors deemed relevant by the Board.
Business Outlook
The business outlook for the fiscal first quarter 2021 is based on our current assumptions and expectations; actual results may differ materially, as a result of, among other things, the important factors discussed in the Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements section of this release.
The Company is providing the following guidance for its fiscal first quarter 2021:
• Revenue of $2.3 billion, plus or minus $200 million
• Non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.85, plus or minus $0.15
Guidance regarding non-GAAP diluted EPS excludes known charges related to amortization of acquired intangible assets of $0.05 per share, estimated share-based compensation expenses of $0.11 per share and restructuring costs of $0.01 per share.
We have not reconciled our non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance for fiscal first quarter 2021 to the most directly comparable GAAP measure because material items that may impact these measures are out of our control and/or cannot be reasonably predicted, including, but not limited to, accelerated depreciation, impairment and other charges related to cost saving efforts, restructuring charges, strategic investment losses or impairment recognized, income tax adjustments on these measures, and other charges or benefits that may arise. The amounts of these measures are not currently available, but may be material to future results. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance for fiscal first quarter 2021 to the corresponding GAAP measures is not available without unreasonable effort. A reconciliation of our historical non-GAAP financial measures to their nearest GAAP equivalent is contained in this release.
