Easy Sledding for Storage Makers

An upgrade to Seagate(STX Quote) and a sweetened outlook for Western Digital(WDC Quote) cheered storage investors and led the sector to modest gains.

Goldman Sachs analyst Laura Conigliaro raised her rating on Seagate to in-line from underperform. In a note to clients published Tuesday, she said that better seasonal demand, slightly improved desktop pricing and continuing strong sales of hard drives for notebooks and consumer electronics devices, such as digital video recorders, should help the company hit or slightly beat current-quarter estimates and "enter the seasonally softer March quarter with low inventories."

The same conditions bode well for rivals Western Digital and Maxtor(MXO Quote) and should lead those companies to issue "incrementally more positive comments" in the next few days, Conigliaro wrote. Indeed, Western Digital raised its guidance late Monday (likely after Conigliaro wrote her report, but before it was published). ...