SanDisk (SNDK) vs. Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) Head-To-Head Analysis

SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) and Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) are both technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, profitabiliy, analyst recommendations, valuation, institutional ownership, risk and dividends.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares SanDisk and Western Digital Corporation’s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	EBITDA	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
SanDisk	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Western Digital Corporation	$17.75 billion	1.51	$3.51 billion	($0.99)	-92.83

Western Digital Corporation has higher revenue and earnings than SanDisk.

Dividends

Western Digital Corporation pays an annual dividend of $2.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.2%. SanDisk does not pay a dividend. Western Digital Corporation pays out -202.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

82.4% of Western Digital Corporation shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.5% of Western Digital Corporation shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares SanDisk and Western Digital Corporation’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
SanDisk	5.74%	5.68%	3.35%
Western Digital Corporation	-1.32%	16.01%	5.81%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and recommmendations for SanDisk and Western Digital Corporation, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
SanDisk	0	0	0	0	N/A
Western Digital Corporation	0	5	28	1	2.88

Western Digital Corporation has a consensus target price of $103.92, indicating a potential upside of 13.08%. Given Western Digital Corporation’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Western Digital Corporation is more favorable than SanDisk.

Summary

Western Digital Corporation beats SanDisk on 10 of the 11 factors compared between the two stocks.

SanDisk Company Profile

SanDisk Corporation offers flash storage solutions. The Company designs, develops and manufactures data storage solutions in a range of form factors using flash memory, controller, firmware and software technologies. The Company operates through flash memory storage products segment. Its solutions include a range of solid state drives (SSD), embedded products, removable cards, universal serial bus (USB), drives, wireless media drives, digital media players, and wafers and components. It offers SSDs for client computing applications, which encompass desktop computers, notebook computers, tablets and other computing devices. Its embedded products are used for embedded storage for mobile phones, tablets, notebooks and other portable and wearable devices, as well as in automotive and connected home applications. Its removable products include cards, USB flash drives, Wireless Drives and Digital Media Players at a range of storage capacities. It sells memory wafers and memory components.

Western Digital Corporation Company Profile

Western Digital Corporation (Western Digital) is a developer, manufacturer and provider of data storage devices and solutions that address the needs of the information technology (IT) industry and the infrastructure that enables the proliferation of data in virtually every industry. The Company’s portfolio of offerings addresses three categories: Datacenter Devices and Solutions (capacity and performance enterprise hard disk drives (HDDs), enterprise solid state drives (SSDs), datacenter software and system solutions); Client Devices (mobile, desktop, gaming and digital video hard drives, client SSDs, embedded products and wafers), and Client Solutions (removable products, hard drive content solutions and flash content solutions). The Company develops and manufactures a portion of the recording heads and magnetic media used in its hard drive products.