Seagate Pin Hopes On Appointment Of Gianluca Romano As CFO

Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ:STX) has announced the appointment of Gianluca Romano as its new chief financial officer (CFO) and executive vice president, with effect from Jan 7, 2019. Romano is replacing the company’s interim CFO, Kate Scolnick.

Romano will be reporting directly to Dave Mosley, Seagate’s chief executive officer and will be in charge of the company's financial functions. Backed by his experience in the areas of finance, operations and information technology and licensing, Romano will also be responsible for the company’s growth.

Notably, Romano has held various senior finance leadership roles in the semiconductor industry throughout his career. Prior to joining Seagate, Romano served as corporate vice president and business finance & accounting of one of the largest semiconductor company — Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) . Prior to Mircon, Romano was associated with Numonyx and STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM) .

With his vast knowhow and expertise in semiconductor companies, Romano can be easily regarded as a veteran in the sector. We expect Romano’s expert guidance to aid the company in scaling new heights. Seagate expects Romano’s financial and operational skills to boost bottom-line growth and in turn benefit the company’s clients and shareholder value.

Growth Prospects

With huge transformations in the storage industry, mobile cloud is taking the center stage. This in turn has bolstered the deployment of high-capacity mass storage products which is beneficial for Seagate.

The company entered into a long-term NAND supply agreement with Toshiba. The agreement will aid Seagate in its innovation of HDD, solid state drives (“SSD”) and hybrid solutions, consequently expanding product portfolio.

Further, hints of PC market stabilization as reflected in the latest report from Gartner are a positive.

Seagate delivered stellar fiscal first-quarter 2019 results. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $1.70 per share, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.55 per share. The figure also improved 96 cents from the year-ago period and 4.9% sequentially.

Revenues of $2.992 billion outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.959 billion and also improved 13.7% from the year-ago quarter and 5.5% sequentially.

Both the top and bottom lines witnessed year-over-year improvement, due to robust adoption on the back of strong demand of Seagate’s storage drives. Moreover, increasing traction for mass storage solutions across the company’s edge and enterprise markets remains a tailwind.

Risks Remain

Sluggish macroeconomic conditions, flattish price environment, and stiff competition primarily from Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) remain near-term headwinds.

Zacks Rank

Seagate carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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