Drive Stocks Slammed by Fears of New Supply Glut

Shares of both Seagate (STX) and Western Digital (WDC) are getting battered on fears that the hard-drive sector could once again soon find itself with a glut of supply.

At least in part, the Street is reacting to this morning’s downgrade of Marvell (MRVL) by Barclays Capital, which–as I noted earlier–was in response to indications from Taiwanese component makers of a slowdown PC demand. Barclays chip analyst Romit Shah wrote that “every company that we met with [in Taiwan] indicated that PC order rates are slowing into the back-to-school season.”

Meanwhile, Collins Stewart analyst Ashok Kumar today notes new data on drive production that he thinks raises ominous clouds for Seagate in particular. Kumar says data from Techno Systems Research, a Japan-based market research firm, find that hard-drive unit production was down 18 percent sequentially in the March quarter, comparable to a 15 percent decline in PC shipments.

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