Western Digital Corporation (WDC): PESTLE Analysis [Nov-2025 Updated]

You're trying to map the future for Western Digital Corporation (WDC), and the PESTLE analysis shows a high-stakes, high-reward bet, honestly. The planned separation of the Flash and HDD businesses is the central political and legal risk, but the economic tailwinds are defintely strong, especially as the memory market recovers. We're forecasting a combined entity revenue of around $15.5 billion for fiscal year 2025, fueled by a projected over 20% rise in NAND flash pricing and a 15% growth in exabyte shipments from hyperscalers. The real story is how WDC navigates US-China trade tensions while simultaneously executing the technological leap to 200+ layer NAND and next-gen HDDs; that's the pivot point you need to understand right now.

Western Digital Corporation (WDC) - PESTLE Analysis: Political factors

US-China trade tensions complicate supply chain and sales in a key market.

You can't talk about a US-based tech manufacturer without immediately addressing the US-China trade dynamic. For Western Digital Corporation (WDC), this is a persistent headwind that creates both tariff costs and demand volatility. The company's exposure to the Asia region is significant, accounting for $3.39 billion of its $9.52 billion net revenue in fiscal year 2025 (FY2025).

Here's the quick math: Asia represents over one-third of your total sales. When geopolitical uncertainty escalates, like the renewed threat of a 100% US tariff on Chinese imports in October 2025, that directly impacts the operating environment for your customers and partners in that region.

The risk isn't just sales, though. It's also the supply chain. WDC relies on a global network, and any Chinese retaliation-such as new export restrictions on critical materials like rare earths, which China announced in October 2025-can increase component costs and introduce defintely unwelcome delays.

Government-imposed export controls on advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment affect long-term technology parity.

While the most stringent US export controls target advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment for AI chips, a technology primarily associated with the Flash business (which WDC spun off), the remaining HDD-focused WDC isn't immune. The core risk is on the supply chain for components and the long-term technology roadmap.

The US government's tightening of the export control regime throughout 2025, especially on items related to high-performance computing, means WDC's suppliers for key HDD components-like controller chips or advanced manufacturing tools-face a more complex, restrictive, and costly regulatory environment. This is a headwind for cost-of-goods-sold (COGS) and can slow down the adoption of cutting-edge technologies like Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) if critical equipment is delayed or restricted. You need a resilient supply chain now more than ever.

Regulatory approval for the planned separation of the Flash and HDD businesses is a major execution risk.

This is a major point of clarity for you: the regulatory risk for the separation is largely in the rearview mirror. Western Digital completed the separation of its Flash business (now SanDisk Corporation) in February 2025.

The new political/regulatory risk is one of concentration and post-separation stability. The remaining WDC is now a pure-play HDD company, and its revenue is highly concentrated in the Cloud segment, which represented 88% of its $9.52 billion total net revenue in FY2025. This concentration makes WDC acutely sensitive to the political and regulatory decisions of a handful of hyperscale cloud customers, many of whom are subject to intense government scrutiny regarding data handling and national security.

• Cloud revenue hit $8.34 billion in FY2025, making WDC's fate tied to a few major players.
• The post-separation WDC must manage a new, leaner operating model while navigating the high-stakes political landscape of its biggest customers.

Shifting global data localization laws increase demand for in-country data storage solutions.

This political trend is actually a clear opportunity for the post-separation WDC. Data localization laws, which require data generated within a country to be stored and processed on servers within that country, are a growing mandate in major markets like India, Brazil, and China throughout 2025.

These laws force companies-including WDC's hyperscale cloud customers-to build out new, in-country data centers instead of relying on a single global hub. This directly increases the demand for high-capacity, cost-efficient mass storage, which is the core strength of WDC's HDD business.

The political fragmentation of the internet, or the rise of 'splinternets,' drives the need for redundant, localized infrastructure, and that means more high-capacity HDDs. The company's focus on nearline HDDs, which offer the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) for mass storage, is perfectly aligned with this political-regulatory push.

Western Digital Corporation (WDC) - PESTLE Analysis: Economic factors

NAND flash pricing is forecast to rise by over 20% in 2025, significantly boosting the Flash business margin.

The supply-demand dynamic in the NAND flash market has fundamentally shifted in 2025, moving from a glut to a supply shortage due to aggressive production cuts by major manufacturers like Western Digital Corporation (WDC) and its joint venture partner Kioxia. This deliberate capacity regulation is having the intended effect: a sharp increase in Average Selling Prices (ASPs).

For WDC's Flash business, this is a major tailwind. While the required forecast is a rise of over 20% for 2025, the cumulative price increase for NAND flash memory products was projected to be as high as 55% over the coming quarters, according to notices issued to customers. This pricing power is defintely the single biggest lever for margin expansion in the Flash segment, especially as the company focuses on higher-margin enterprise Solid State Drives (SSDs) and high-capacity Quad-Level Cell (QLC) products.

Here's the quick math: a 10% sequential rise in NAND contract prices, as projected for Q3 2025, translates directly into hundreds of millions in additional revenue and disproportionately higher operating profit due to the fixed cost structure of fabrication plants (fabs).

The near-term risks are low because of the sustained production cuts, but what this estimate hides is the potential for customers to shift to lower-capacity or older-generation drives if the price hikes become too steep, though AI-driven demand makes this unlikely for enterprise storage.

Global inflation and high interest rates increase the cost of capital for major data center expansion projects, slowing some enterprise HDD sales.

While demand for storage remains structurally strong, the high-interest-rate environment is a clear headwind for the capital-intensive data center sector, which is WDC's primary market for high-capacity Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). Elevated long-term interest rates are directly affecting the financing costs for massive infrastructure projects, which often rely on 30-year financing arrangements.

This increased cost of capital is visible in the debt market, where data center debt has surged 112% in 2025, with around $25 billion issued this year alone. This 'borrow-to-build' race, while funding growth, also introduces caution among data center developers and colocation providers, leading to longer sales cycles and slower enterprise HDD order fulfillment in some cases.

The impact is most pronounced in the enterprise segment outside of the top-tier hyperscalers, where developers are struggling to make the numbers work due to significant bid-ask spreads on asset trades.

Currency fluctuations, particularly the US Dollar against the Japanese Yen (due to Kioxia joint venture), impact reported earnings.

WDC's financial exposure to the Japanese Yen (JPY) is significant because of its joint venture with Kioxia, which is a Japanese company. The production costs and capital expenditures related to the flash manufacturing facilities in Japan are denominated in JPY, while WDC's reported revenue is in US Dollars (USD).

The volatility in the USD/JPY exchange rate creates substantial translation risk. For example, the USD/JPY rate has experienced significant swings in 2025, dropping below ¥140 in April before rebounding to approximately ¥145.74 in May. A stronger USD against the JPY means that WDC's share of Kioxia's JPY-denominated earnings and assets translates into a lower USD value on the consolidated financial statements, creating a drag on reported earnings.

The broader forecast suggests continued volatility, with the USD/JPY potentially reaching a high near ¥152.43 by December 2025. This strong dollar trajectory will likely continue to pressure the reported financial results of the Flash business until the currency stabilizes or the company increases its hedging activities.

Strong hyperscaler capital expenditure is driving demand for high-capacity HDDs, with exabyte shipments projected to grow by 15% in 2025.

The explosion in Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure is the primary driver of demand for WDC's high-capacity HDDs. Hyperscalers-companies like Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft-are in a massive CapEx race to build out the data centers needed for AI training and inference.

Aggregate hyperscaler CapEx is projected to reach as high as $423 billion in 2025, a significant portion of which is dedicated to data storage infrastructure. Worldwide data center CapEx is expected to rise by more than 30% in 2025. This unprecedented spending directly translates into orders for WDC's Nearline HDDs.

We see the effect in WDC's recent performance: the company recorded a 12% quarter-over-quarter growth in total HDD exabyte shipments for the period ending Q2 2025. This momentum supports the full-year projection of a 15% growth in exabyte shipments, driven by the need for cost-efficient, high-capacity cold storage for the vast amounts of data generated and consumed by AI workloads.

The key drivers of this demand are:

• Hyperscaler CapEx: Projected to top $335 billion in 2025.
• Nearline HDD Shipments: WDC shipped an estimated 170 Exabytes for Nearline Applications in C2Q 2025.
• Average Capacity: The average capacity of WDC's Nearline HDDs reached about 20.5TB in C2Q 2025.

This is a pure volume play for WDC, where the increasing capacity per drive (terabytes per unit) is the real story, not just the unit count.

Western Digital Corporation (WDC) - PESTLE Analysis: Social factors

Continued global shift to remote and hybrid work models sustains demand for cloud storage and data center infrastructure.

You can't ignore the lasting impact of remote work; it's a structural shift, not a temporary trend. This societal change directly fuels the demand for Western Digital Corporation's (WDC) high-capacity Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) used in hyperscale data centers, which are the backbone of cloud services.

For WDC, this means the Cloud segment is now the primary growth engine. It represented 54% of total revenue in the fiscal first quarter of 2025, and then 55% in the fiscal second quarter of 2025, underscoring its importance. Honestly, the enterprise is where the money is now.

The numbers show the story: 76% of organizations globally are using cloud services to support their remote workforces, and 61% of IT professionals believe cloud computing will dominate remote work infrastructure by the end of 2025. This long-term commitment translates into multi-year purchase orders for WDC's nearline storage drives, providing stable revenue visibility well into 2027.

Increasing public and corporate awareness of data security elevates the importance of secure storage solutions in both enterprise and consumer products.

As more sensitive data moves off-premises and onto cloud platforms, public and corporate concern over data breaches skyrockets. This heightened awareness means customers-from major cloud providers to individual consumers-are willing to pay a premium for storage solutions that incorporate advanced security features like hardware encryption and self-encrypting drives (SEDs).

The market for solutions addressing this concern is growing fast. The global data security market size is forecast to increase by $5.85 billion between 2024 and 2029, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.4%. This trend forces WDC to defintely prioritize security certifications and features in its enterprise SSDs and high-end consumer products, turning security from a feature into a core requirement.

Here's the quick math on the security driver:

Consumer electronics demand remains volatile, affecting sales of lower-margin client SSDs and external drives.

While the enterprise business is booming, the consumer side is still a bit of a roller coaster. Consumer electronics demand is highly sensitive to macroeconomic factors, like inflation and interest rates, which directly impact discretionary spending on PCs, laptops, and external drives.

This volatility is visible in WDC's Client and Consumer segments (which include lower-margin client SSDs and external drives). In the fiscal third quarter of 2025, for example, Client revenue decreased 2% sequentially, and Consumer revenue dropped by 13% sequentially. This is a clear signal that the average person is still being cautious with their tech spending.

This is why WDC's strategic focus is shifting away from this volatile segment toward the more stable, high-margin Cloud business, especially following the planned spin-off of the Flash business (SanDisk).

• Client Revenue Q3 FY2025: -2% sequentially.
• Consumer Revenue Q3 FY2025: -13% sequentially.
• Impact: Volatility in sales of client SSDs and external drives.

The societal push for digital transformation across all industries accelerates the need for massive data storage capacity.

Every industry-from healthcare to finance to manufacturing-is undergoing a massive digital transformation (DX). This societal imperative to digitize processes, adopt Artificial Intelligence (AI), and leverage Big Data analytics is creating an insatiable appetite for data storage capacity that WDC's high-capacity HDDs are uniquely positioned to meet.

Global data generation is projected to exceed 180 zettabytes by the end of 2025. That is a staggering amount of data that needs to be stored, managed, and analyzed. The overall global data storage market size reflects this, estimated at $250.77 billion in 2025. This market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 17.2% through 2032.

The emergence of AI workloads is a major catalyst here. These applications require immense storage for training data, and WDC's high-capacity HDDs are the most cost-effective solution for this 'cool' or archival storage layer in data centers. This is the structural tailwind that makes the HDD business so durable right now.

Western Digital Corporation (WDC) - PESTLE Analysis: Technological factors

Successful commercialization of next-generation Hard Disk Drive (HDD) technologies like Energy-Assisted Magnetic Recording (EAMR), including HAMR and MAMR, is crucial for maintaining capacity leadership.

You're in a race for areal density, and right now, Western Digital Corporation is playing catch-up on the next-generation recording technology. The company has moved past its Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) efforts and is now focused on Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR), but its competitor, Seagate, is already shipping HAMR-based drives to the mass market in 2025.

WDC's current capacity leadership relies on its enhanced Energy-Assisted Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (ePMR) and UltraSMR technologies, delivering up to 28TB (Conventional Magnetic Recording) and 36TB (Shingled Magnetic Recording) HDDs in 2025. The first WDC HAMR drives are not scheduled to debut until 2027, with hyperscale customer validation expected to complete by the end of 2026. This two-year lag presents a clear risk to near-term capacity leadership in the high-margin cloud segment.

Here's the quick math: If a hyperscaler can deploy a competitor's 30TB HAMR drive in 2025 versus WDC's 28TB ePMR drive, that's a 7% capacity advantage per slot, impacting the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculation immediately. That's a big deal for massive data centers.

Rapid advancement in 3D NAND technology, specifically the transition to 200+ layer architectures, requires massive, continuous capital investment to stay competitive with rivals.

The NAND flash market demands relentless investment to maintain a competitive cost-per-bit advantage, especially as the industry pushes past the 200-layer mark. While WDC's Flash business, which includes its joint venture with Kioxia, successfully separated as SanDisk on February 24, 2025, the underlying technological investment pressure remains. Rivals are already in mass production of 236-layer and 321-layer architectures, driving density gains.

The capital expenditure (CapEx) required for this transition is significant, even with the separation. WDC's total annual CapEx for the trailing twelve months (TTM) ending October 3, 2025, was $389 million. This investment is crucial to fund the transition to higher-layer architectures, such as the Kioxia-developed BiCS8 (218L) generation, and explore future technologies like Penta Layer Cell (PLC) NAND. If CapEx is constrained, the cost-per-bit will rise, making WDC's Solid-State Drives (SSDs) less competitive against market leaders like Samsung and SK Hynix.

The competitive threat from emerging storage technologies, like computational storage and advanced tape, still exists.

The competitive landscape is no longer just a two-way fight between HDDs and standard SSDs. Advanced tape and high-density SSDs are carving out specific niches, challenging the HDD's dominance in bulk storage. Enterprise SSD shipments are projected to grow at a 23% CAGR through 2027, with hyperscalers increasingly adopting high-capacity NVMe SSDs for performance-sensitive workloads.

Also, don't ignore tape. The Tape Storage Market is valued at $3.712 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow at a 5.82% CAGR through 2035. This growth is driven by its unparalleled TCO, energy efficiency, and 'air-gapped' security against ransomware for long-term archival and cold storage-the very segment where high-capacity HDDs generate the most profit. LTO-10, with a projected 30TB native capacity, is a direct competitor to WDC's high-capacity nearline drives in the archival tier.

• SSD/AFA adoption for performance-sensitive workloads.
• Advanced tape for ultra-low-cost, secure archival.
• HDD's market size remains strong at $48.83 billion in 2025, but the pressure on the cold storage tier is defintely rising.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) workloads demand higher-performance, high-capacity storage, creating a new premium market segment.

The explosion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) workloads is the single largest demand driver for WDC's high-capacity products. The company's strategy to focus on the Cloud segment is paying off, with fiscal year 2025 revenue surging to $9.52 billion, an increase of 51% year over year.

AI/ML requires massive, high-capacity storage for training data sets and inference engines, which HDDs still provide at the best cost-per-terabyte. The Cloud/data center segment accounted for up to 90% of WDC's total revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, demonstrating this concentration. In Q4 FY25 alone, WDC shipped 190 exabytes of storage, a 32% increase year over year, fueled by demand for its 26TB CMR and 32TB UltraSMR nearline drives. This is an enormous volume of data, and it confirms the CEO's view that HDDs remain the foundation for the world's data infrastructure in an AI-driven future.

The action is clear: WDC must execute its HAMR roadmap flawlessly to capitalize on this AI-driven demand, ensuring its future 40TB+ drives maintain the cost-per-TB advantage against all competing technologies, including high-density QLC/PLC SSDs.

Western Digital Corporation (WDC) - PESTLE Analysis: Legal factors

Complex intellectual property (IP) disputes, especially concerning NAND flash patents, carry significant litigation risk and cost.

The core of Western Digital Corporation's (WDC) legal risk sits squarely in its massive intellectual property (IP) portfolio. With a business built on proprietary storage technology, patent litigation is a constant, expensive reality. You have to budget for these legal battles like you budget for R&D. The complexity of these issues was clearly demonstrated in fiscal year 2025.

For instance, the SPEX Technologies patent infringement case created a massive contingent liability in early 2025. A federal judge initially ordered WDC to secure a bond or pay a $553 million penalty in February 2025, which included a $316 million jury verdict plus $237 million in interest charges. That's a huge cash flow risk. To be fair, WDC's legal team scored a major win later that year, when a June 2025 ruling dramatically reduced the total award to just $1 in nominal damages, but the legal cost and market uncertainty in between were substantial.

Still, other risks remain. The company is also dealing with a separate patent infringement verdict from German firm MR Technologies, where the damages were raised to about $380 million with interest. Here's the quick math on the legal expense component: WDC's Non-GAAP gross margin guidance for the fiscal second quarter of 2025 excluded approximately $20 million to $30 million related to the amortization of patent licenses tied to a litigation matter. This is just the ongoing operational cost of managing a complex IP landscape.

Compliance with stringent global data privacy regulations, such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and various US state laws, is mandatory for all storage solutions.

WDC sells storage solutions globally, which means every product-from enterprise hard drives to consumer cloud services-must comply with a patchwork of data privacy laws. This isn't optional. The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the growing number of US state laws, like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), create a constant compliance burden.

While WDC has not faced a major public fine in 2025, the risk is clear. Other companies have been hit with massive penalties for failures in their opt-out mechanisms or data handling. For example, in 2025, the California Attorney General announced a $1.55 million fine against Healthline Media for CCPA violations, and the California Privacy Protection Agency settled with Tractor Supply Co. for $1.35 million. This shows regulators are actively enforcing the rules, focusing on:

• Ensuring opt-out mechanisms for data 'sale' or 'sharing' are easy to use.
• Maintaining clear, transparent privacy policies.
• Properly contracting with third-party advertising partners.

Any misstep in WDC's software or cloud services could expose the company to fines of up to 4% of global annual revenue under GDPR. That's a defintely a serious risk.

Antitrust scrutiny in key markets could delay or complicate the planned separation and any future M&A activity.

The most significant corporate legal event in 2025 was the separation of the Flash business into Sandisk Corporation, which was successfully completed on February 24, 2025. While the separation itself was completed, the process was complicated by the ongoing patent litigation, with the judge in the SPEX case expressing 'concerns about potential corporate restructuring' over how the judgment would be enforced against the new entities.

Looking ahead, any future mergers and acquisitions (M&A) will face intense global antitrust scrutiny. The failed merger talks with Kioxia in late 2023, which would have created a NAND flash giant on par with Samsung Electronics, highlighted the regulatory hurdle. Analysts noted that China's approval would have been a major complication. The current regulatory environment, demonstrated by the US Department of Justice's (DOJ) January 2025 lawsuit to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks, shows that enforcers are willing to challenge large tech deals, even if they ultimately settle. This means any major strategic move by WDC or the separated Sandisk will require a robust, multi-jurisdictional antitrust strategy.

Trade secret protection, particularly concerning joint venture operations like Kioxia, requires constant vigilance.

WDC's competitive advantage in NAND flash memory is inextricably linked to its joint venture with Kioxia Corporation. This partnership operates manufacturing facilities in Japan, including Yokkaichi and Kitakami plants, which produce the cutting-edge 3D flash memory. The technology developed within this joint venture is a crown jewel of the company, and protecting those trade secrets is paramount.

The sheer scale of the joint venture underscores the value of the IP at stake. For example, the Japanese government approved a subsidy of up to 150 billion yen (approximately $1 billion) in early 2024 for the joint venture's advanced production facilities, with total government support reaching ¥242.9 billion out of a planned capital expenditure of ¥728.8 billion. This demonstrates the national strategic importance of the technology. While there have been no public 2025 trade secret disputes, the risk is inherent in any deep, cross-border technical collaboration. Vigilance against industrial espionage, employee defection, and cyber threats aimed at stealing this NAND flash technology is a non-negotiable legal and security priority.

Western Digital Corporation (WDC) - PESTLE Analysis: Environmental factors

Increasing scrutiny on the energy consumption of data storage; high-capacity HDDs must demonstrate lower Watts-per-Terabyte to meet data center efficiency goals.

The biggest environmental pressure point for Western Digital Corporation (WDC) is the energy consumption of its products, specifically in massive data centers. Honestly, the hyperscalers-Amazon, Google, Microsoft-are now mandating energy efficiency as a core procurement metric, so it's a cost-of-doing-business issue, not just a sustainability report footnote.

WDC's strategy focuses on reducing the power per unit of storage, often measured in Watts-per-Terabyte (W/TB). The company has set an aggressive target to reduce its downstream Scope 3 emissions (product use phase) by 50% per petabyte by 2030, using a 2020 baseline. This is where the engineering really counts. For instance, their high-capacity enterprise drives, like the WD Gold Enterprise Class SATA HDD, achieve a power efficiency index (idle) as low as 0.31 W/TB for certain models as of early 2025. Also, the new 32TB UltraSMR HDDs are engineered to use as little as 5.5W power idle, which is a critical selling point for enormous, power-constrained cloud deployments. That's a clear, quantifiable competitive advantage.

Compliance with e-waste directives (like the EU's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive) adds to product lifecycle management costs.

Navigating the global patchwork of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations, like the EU's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, is a growing operational cost. These rules force manufacturers to finance the collection, treatment, and disposal of their products at the end of their life. Plus, the new 2025 amendments in jurisdictions like California, which introduce additional rules and fees for battery-embedded products, only complicate the compliance landscape.

To manage this, WDC operates its Easy Recycle product take-back program in the US, which has recycled over 26,000 devices and diverted more than 11 metric tons of waste from landfills since its launch. This is a small but important step toward mitigating future financial liabilities from e-waste. Anyway, the bigger internal goal is operational: WDC is committed to diverting more than 95% of its operational waste from landfills by 2030.

Company sustainability goals require reducing carbon emissions in manufacturing and improving the recyclability of components.

WDC has committed to science-based targets (SBTi) consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, which demands a total overhaul of their operational energy mix. They are defintely moving away from simply purchasing renewable energy credits to a more ambitious, carbon-free energy approach. The near-term action is a 42% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030 from a 2020 base year. They are already making progress, having achieved nearly a 15% absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions reduction since the targets were approved in 2021.

Here's the quick math on their long-term commitments:

• Achieve 100% carbon-free energy by 2030 for global operations.
• Reach Net zero emissions in Scope 1 and 2 by 2032.

The product design side is also changing, with a focus on circularity. By 2030, WDC aims to use 43% recycled content in the product and 72% recycled content in the packaging for their enterprise HDDs. This reduces reliance on virgin materials and addresses supply chain sustainability risks.

Water usage in semiconductor fabrication (NAND) facilities is a growing environmental concern in regions facing water scarcity.

The fabrication of NAND flash memory, which Western Digital Corporation (WDC) produces through its joint business ventures, is a highly water-intensive process, especially in regions facing chronic water stress. The sheer volume of ultra-pure water required for wafer cleaning and cooling is immense. This makes water stewardship a critical factor for operational continuity and community relations.

WDC's primary target is to reduce water withdrawals by 20% by 2030, using a 2022 baseline. The good news is they are ahead of schedule. As of the end of fiscal year 2024, the company had already achieved a 23% reduction in water withdrawals compared to the 2022 baseline. This over-achievement suggests effective internal water management and recirculation systems are working. Still, as NAND production scales up, the absolute volume of water withdrawn will remain a key metric to watch.

Here is a summary of Western Digital Corporation's key environmental targets and 2025-relevant performance metrics: