Seagate to Cut 6,500 Jobs Globally Despite Strong Q4 Earnings Outlook

Data storage firm Seagate has decided to cut around 6,500 jobs worldwide, or 14 percent of its total workforce, by the end of fiscal year 2017. This is despite improvement in company's estimated revenues for fourth-quarter of fiscal year 2016 ended July 1, the company said in a press release on Monday.

On the back of increase in demand for the company's HDD product portfolio, Seagate is now expected to report revenue of approximately $2.65 billion compared with previous forecast of approximately $2.3 billion.

Despite improvement in demand, the long-term outlook for the company and for the whole HDD business remains weak as demand for personal computers that usually drive the demand for the drives remains weak and has continuously declined over the last few years.

As a result of this improvement in the company's near-term outlook, Seagate's shares were up nearly 13 percent in after-hours trading, as reported by The Wall Street Journal .

The report cited a company's spokesman to say Seagate still needs to reduce costs given "the general macroeconomic climate" affecting its business.

On June 29, the company had announced job cuts of around 3 percent of its worldwide workforce.

WSJ also pointed out that Seagate's results often reflect business cycles that are shared by Western Digital, which recently responded to the shift to flash technology by buying SanDisk. Western Digital last week also boosted its earnings and revenue guidance for the latest period