Ticker Teardown Dossier
Seagate ($STX), taken apart the way the desk does.
Seagate (STX) Teardown Dossier · As of 2026-11-02, refreshed after FQ1 2027 results
The STX dossier is the desk's Seagate teardown written out as a document, plus what a five-minute video cannot carry: the last eight quarters of Seagate's own SEC filings in one table (fiscal years for a foreign filer whose quarterly reports carry no structured data), a peer comparison with numbers, the level map rebuilt from the latest close, and a link to every filing used. Rebuilt after each quarterly print.
Look inside before you buy
2,242 words · about 10 min to read · 10 sections · data as of 2 November 2026 · last refreshed after FQ1 2027 results
Table of contents
- What is in this dossier
- What this is not
- 1. The teardown
- The setup
- The business: not a chip company
- The lead: the checkable fact
- Our own research disagrees
- Valuation: mind the vintage
- The street: an average, not a disclosure
- The bear case: one: the cycle
- The bear case: two, three, four
- The chart: be honest
- The verdict
- 2. What changed since it was written
- 3. The filings: the last eight quarters
- 4. Valuation against the peers
- 5. Level map
- 6. Sources
- 7. What this dossier cannot do
- More dossiers in this theme
Excerpt
1. The teardown
Written 2026-09-14, with prices as of 2026-09-11. Figures in this part are as the desk read them that day; parts 2 to 5 carry the numbers as of 2026-11-02.
The setup
Seagate is up 322% in twelve months, and it is 27% below its own high. Same company, same drives, same customers. Which is it: a cycle taking a breath, or a commodity business that got repriced as a growth stock and is now being repriced back?
The business: not a chip company
Start with what Seagate sells, because most people get this wrong. It does not make memory chips. It makes nearline enterprise hard drives: spinning platters, the slow layer sitting underneath the fast flash in a data center. Every AI training run needs a hot tier, and flash handles that. Everything else, the training corpora, the video archives, the backups, the petabytes nobody is reading right now, lives on hard drives, because per terabyte nothing else is close on cost.
The lead: the checkable fact
The frontier in drives is heat assisted magnetic recording, which the industry says as HAMR. You heat a nanoscale spot on the platter so a denser bit can be written, then cool it before it spreads. Seagate's version is called Mozaic 3+. And here is the checkable fact: Seagate is shipping 44 TB HAMR drives at hyperscale today, while Western Digital, the only other player at this scale, is still in qualification. That is not an estimate and it is not a roadmap. One company is shipping and one is not, and that gap is the entire reason Seagate carries a premium over its twin.
One table from the document
3. The filings: the last eight quarters
| USD millions, period ended | 2024-12-27 | 2025-03-28 | 2025-06-27 | 2025-10-03 | 2026-01-02 | 2026-04-03 | 2026-07-03 | 2026-10-02 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fiscal period | FQ2 2025 | FQ3 2025 | FQ4 2027 | FQ1 2026 | FQ2 2026 | FQ3 2026 | FQ4 2026 | FQ1 2027 |
| Source filing | 10-Q 2025-01-24 | 10-Q 2025-05-02 | 10-K 2025-08-01 | 10-Q 2025-10-31 | 10-Q 2026-01-30 | 10-Q 2026-04-29 | 10-K 2026-08-04 | 10-Q 2026-10-29 |
| Revenue | 2,325 | 2,160 | 2,444 | 2,629 | 2,825 | 3,112 | 3,629 | 4,233 |
| Gross margin | 34.9% | 35.2% | 37.4% | 39.4% | 41.6% | 46.5% | 52.3% | 57.3% |
| Operating income | 488.0 | 431.0 | 568.0 | 694.0 | 843.0 | 998.0 | 1,559 | 2,064 |
| Net income | 336.0 | 340.0 | 488.0 | 549.0 | 593.0 | 748.0 | 1,294 | 1,761 |
| Operating cash flow | 221.0 | 259.0 | 508.0 | 532.0 | 723.0 | 1,114 | 1,305 | 1,690 |
| Capex | -71.0 | -43.0 | -83.0 | -105.0 | -116.0 | -161.0 | -187.0 | -211.0 |
| Free cash flow | 150.0 | 216.0 | 425.0 | 427.0 | 607.0 | 953.0 | 1,118 | 1,479 |
| Cash and equivalents | 1,238 | 814.0 | 891.0 | 1,112 | 1,046 | 1,146 | 1,704 | 1,258 |
| Debt (book, excl. leases) | 5,729 | 5,193 | 5,046 | 5,046 | 4,546 | 3,905 | 3,603 | 2,383 |
| Diluted shares (M) | 217.0 | 216.0 | 217.0* | 226.0 | 228.0 | 229.0 | 229.0* | 232.0 |
The preview stops here. The full document is delivered by email after purchase.
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It reads our $STX data (thesis, key levels, peers, a year of prices) and any chart screenshot you paste, then explains the setup in plain English. Free with an email login, 5 questions a day. Education only: it never tells you to buy or sell, and it can be wrong, so check the numbers.
What the dossier has that the video does not
The filings themselves: revenue, gross margin, operating income, net income, operating cash flow, capex, free cash flow, cash, debt and diluted shares, quarter by quarter, each column dated with the filing it comes from. A foreign filer whose quarterly reports carry no structured data gets its fiscal years, and the dossier says so.
Never stale
Every dossier carries an "as of" date and the quarter it was last refreshed after. It is rebuilt after each print, and the desk's daily check flags any dossier left more than 45 days without a refresh. The written teardown keeps its date, and a "what changed since" section gives the move in the price and the filings since.
What is inside
- The teardown in writing: the business, the bull case, the full bear case and the verdict, dated.
- What changed since it was written: the price move and every SEC filing since.
- Eight quarters of the company's own SEC filings in one table, each column dated, with a plain read of what the table says.
- Peers with numbers: market cap, revenue growth, operating margin, EV / sales and distance from the 52-week high.
- The level map rebuilt from the latest close: where the price sits against the 52-week range and each level.
- Sources: a link to every filing and results release used.
Buy it if
- You hold or watch $STX and want a structured read before acting.
- You want levels you can check on the chart, not an opinion.
Skip it if
- You want a buy signal. A dossier explains and maps; it does not signal.
- You want every name on the desk. The Teardown Library covers every dossier, current and future, for less than four dossiers.
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An educational research publication, not investment advice, trade signals, a managed account, or an advisory service. Nothing in it is a recommendation to buy or sell any security. See our disclosures.