Ironically, HDD Shortage Boosted Seagate's Finances

In a darkly amusing turn of events, Seagate was found to have actually benefited from the hard disk drive shortage and subsequent price hike.

It helped that the company didn't actually get hit directly by the Thailand floods, unlike Western Digital.

Long story short, Seagate shipped 3.1% fewer drives, but saw earnings increase by 18.5% and the profitability soar by 375%.

“Seagate dramatically reduced product configuration complexity and moved the vast majority of our fulfillment process to direct factory shipments,” said Stephen Luczo, chief executive officer of Seagate.

“These efforts have fundamentally altered demand planning dynamics with our customers and have resulted in a much better alignment of supply and demand. We expect that these improvements to supply chain management will become standard practice as our industry fully recovers over the course of calendar 2012, benefiting our industry, suppliers and customers.”