Western Digital reveals huge HDD drop-off, says Thailand flood recovery ‘ahead of expectations’

Western Digital filed this week quarterly financial results for last fall, revealing the true impact of weeks-long flooding in Thailand on both its hard drive production output and bottom line.

According to the company, it shipped 28.5 million HDDs over the last three months of 2011. Months before the flooding, Western Digital’s Thai factories alone produced 32.4 million HDDs, with those in Malaysia delivering 21.6 million.

Shipping 25.5 million fewer HDDs last quarter led the HDD manufacturer to post $2 billion in revenue and a net income of $145 million – both significant declines from the same quarter in 2010. Western Digital said the planned acquisition of former competitor Hitachi GST also cost it $14 million during the quarter. The deal remains incomplete.

The company’s flood recovery costs have so far topped $199 million. Western Digital President and CEO John Coyne said “substantial progress” has already been made.

“While much work remains to be done over the next several quarters to reach our pre-flood manufacturing capabilities, the progress thus far is significantly ahead of our original expectations and is a tribute to the dedicated and effective actions of our employees, contractors and Thai government agencies, the efforts of our supply partners and the support of our customers,” said Coyne.

Complicating the costly recovery effort, an arbitrator ordered Coyne in November to pay rival HDD maker Seagate $525 million to settle a years-old breach-of-contract case.

Western Digital revealed that slider production is underway again, though full manufacturing recovery will take until September. (via Western Digital)