Seagate Announces First Customer Samples Of 8 Terabyte Hard Drive During Fiscal Q4 Earnings Call

Overall Seagate Technology closed out its fiscal year (ended June 27, 2014) in good shape. The drive maker reported fourth quarter revenue of $3.3 billion, which was enough to pull a healthy profit of $320 million along with diluted earnings per share of $0.95. It also generated around $577 million in operating cash flow and returned a sizable $166 million to shareholders in the form of dividends and share redemptions.

For its full fiscal year 2014, Seagate returned a whopping $2.5 billion to shareholders and raised $1.8 billion in investment grade debt. What this all boils down to is that Seagate found itself on strong footing and appears to be in fantastic shape moving forward.

"Throughout fiscal year 2014, Seagate delivered strong financial and operational performance and returned significant value to shareholders. We made strategic investments in our technology portfolio, which enabled us to continue to innovate into higher capacity and power efficient storage solutions, and expanding our capabilities to serve a broader storage customer base in the future through new cloud systems and solutions and flash technology for connected storage," said Steve Luczo, Seagate’s chairman and chief executive officer.

Seagate 8TB HDD

Speaking of higher capacity solutions, Luczo coyly revealed during a conference call that Seagate has begun shipping its first batch of 8TB capacity hard drives to customers.

"We have also delivered 8TB customer development units to major customers and cloud service providers and the initial customer feedback has been very positive," Luczo said.

Luczo didn't drop any hints as to what technology is behind Seagate's 8TB hard drive, though we can surmise that the company either went with more platters or with a Helium-filled solution.