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Western Digital Corporation
20511 Lake Forest Drive
Lake Forest, California 92630
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Tel: 949.672.7676 |
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Timothy M. Leyden |
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Executive Vice President |
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Chief Financial Officer |
February 25, 2009
VIA EDGAR AND BY FACSIMILE
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Division of Corporation Finance
Mail Stop 4561
100 F Street, NE
Washington, D.C. 20549
Attn: Kathleen Collins, Accounting Branch Chief
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Re:
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Western Digital Corporation |
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Form 10-K for Fiscal Year Ended June 27, 2008 |
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Filed August 20, 2008 |
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Form 10-Q for the Quarterly Period Ended December 26, 2008 |
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Filed January 29, 2009 |
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Form 8-K filed December 17, 2008 |
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File No. 001-08703 |
Ladies and Gentlemen:
We received your letter dated February 12, 2009 (the Letter), setting forth an additional
comment of the staff (the Staff) of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the Commission) on
our above-referenced reports filed under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Our response to the
specific comment is set forth below. For the convenience of the Staff, the comment from the Letter
is restated in bold prior to the response to the comment.
Form 10-Q for the Quarterly Period Ended December 26, 2008
Note 9, Restructuring, page 12
1. |
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We note in your response to our prior comment 2 that you determined a triggering event
occurred in the second quarter of fiscal 2009 resulting in a reassessment of goodwill, which
you expected to complete prior to filing the Form 10-Q for the second quarter of fiscal 2009.
We have reviewed the December 26, 2008 Form 10-Q and note that no impairment of goodwill was
recorded. Provide us with the details of your impairment analysis that supports the current
value of your goodwill. Further, we note that in December 2008 the Company announced a
restructuring plan that includes the closure of one of the hard drive manufacturing facilities
in Thailand and the closure or disposal of one of the substrate manufacturing facilities in
Malaysia, both of which were acquired as part of the Komag acquisition, which contributed to a
significant amount of the goodwill balance. Please explain further how you considered this
restructuring plan when analyzing your goodwill for impairment. |
Response:
We have one reporting unit which is our single operating segment, the hard drive business, for
purposes of testing goodwill for impairment in accordance with SFAS 142. In the first step of the
goodwill impairment test, we determined that the fair value of our
single reporting unit exceeded its carrying amount. Therefore, we concluded that goodwill was not
impaired, and the second step of the impairment test was not required. To determine the fair value
of the reporting unit, we used the market approach based on our market capitalization plus a
control premium at a valuation date of December 26, 2008. Given the volatility in the capital
markets, we used an average market capitalization based on share prices and the respective
outstanding shares for eight trading days before and eight trading days after the valuation date.
The control premium added to our average market capitalization was based on the median of control
premium percentages from ten non-hostile acquisition transactions completed during the years 2005
through 2008 where the target was a public company within the U.S. storage/hard disk drive
industry. This control premium was applied to our average market capitalization. The summary of
the calculation is as follows:
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
February 25, 2009
Page 2
in millions, except share price*
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Calculation of Fair Value |
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Average share price |
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$ |
12.16 |
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Outstanding shares |
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222.5 |
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Market capitalization |
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$ |
2,706 |
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Control premium at 35.7%** |
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$ |
966 |
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Fair value |
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$ |
3,671 |
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Carrying Amount |
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Shareholders equity (carrying amount) |
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$ |
2,921 |
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Fair value > carrying amount |
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$ |
750 |
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all data is as of December 26, 2008 except the average share
price which represents the average closing share price eight
trading days before and eight trading days after December 26, 2008. |
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** |
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fair value exceeds carrying value at a control premium of 8.0%
or greater. |
Please note that the Komag acquisition was an acquisition of an existing vendor and component
manufacturer, whose operations were fully integrated into the hard drive manufacturing process. As
such, the acquisition of Komag did not create a separate and distinct reporting unit. The Malaysia
facility being closed or disposed of was one of several facilities acquired from Komag and
activities conducted at this facility are also performed at another facility which was acquired
from Komag. The Thailand facility that is being closed was not part of the Komag acquisition. It
is one of several pre-existing hard drive assembly facilities. We considered our restructuring
plan when analyzing our goodwill for impairment and determined that it did not change how
management views the company with respect to reporting units. Therefore, we continue to have one
reporting unit to which goodwill is assigned which is our operating segment, the hard drive
business. We also considered the guidance in paragraph 29 of SFAS 142, which states that
long-lived asset impairment testing under SFAS 144 is to be performed, and any impairment loss
recognized, prior to the goodwill impairment test. Accordingly, we incorporated the impact of the
restructuring plan and related long-lived asset impairment charges in determining the carrying
amount of our single reporting unit in the first step of the goodwill impairment assessment.
Subsequent to our quarter ended December 26, 2008, our stock price has further recovered to a
closing price as of February 25, 2009 of $14.55.
We appreciate the Staffs comments and request that the Staff contact the undersigned at
949-672-7676 (telephone) or 949-672-7589 (facsimile) with any questions or comments regarding this
letter.
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Respectfully submitted, |
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Western Digital Corporation |
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By:
Name:
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/s/ Timothy M. Leyden
Timothy M. Leyden
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Title:
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Executive Vice President
and Chief Financial Officer |
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cc: Robert Plesnarski, Esq., OMelveny & Myers LLP