Supply issues hit Seagate's fourth quarter income

Notebook hard drive supply problems and falling prices take their toll, but annual income up

Seagate shipped 183 million hard disk drives in the 2008 financial year

Hard drive maker Seagate saw net income drop to $160m (£80m) in the fourth quarter of 2008, down from $541m a year earlier, though last year’s figure was inflated by a $359m tax gain.

The figures fell short of analyst estimates, and Seagate share values fell 9.2 per cent on the news.

The company blamed ‘product execution’ problems that saw Seagate struggle to fulfil orders for notebook PCs hard drives for the quarterly shortfall, coupled a four to seven per cent drop in average unit prices.

The company claims to have shipped approximately 43 million hard drives in the quarter, and 183 million over the course of the financial year, up 15 per cent on 2007.

Net income for the year was $1.26bn, up from $913m for the year ended June 2007. Annual revenue was $12.7bn, up from $11.4bn year on year.