Enterprise Data Storage Systems

Sandisk reported fiscal Q4 2026 revenue of $8,965 million, up 372% from a year earlier, with gross margin of 84.6%, and guided fiscal Q1 2027 revenue to $10.30 billion to $10.80 billion with non-GAAP earnings per share of $44.00 to $46.00. Datacenter revenue reached $2,977 million in the quarter, up 103% sequentially, and $5,153 million for fiscal 2026, up 437%, while edge revenue was $5,432 million for the quarter, up 48% sequentially. Since its April earnings call, the company has signed five more agreements under its New Business Model, three with new customers and two expanding earlier deals, and it backs out $2,476 million tied to prepayments and deposits under these agreements when calculating adjusted free cash flow for fiscal 2026. The board approved another $14 billion in buybacks, bringing the remaining authorization to $15.5 billion. The stock trades at 7.75 times forward earnings as of October 6, against a sector P/E of 23.74, even as analysts expect EPS growth of 23.72% in 2027; about two-thirds of fiscal Q4 sequential growth came from higher prices and one-third from higher volume, and consumer revenue fell 32% from the prior quarter.

Demingli stated on an investor interaction platform on October 9 that its existing enterprise storage products have successfully entered the supply chains of multiple leading internet, server, and information technology application innovation ecosystem customers, and it has built a full-stack enterprise storage technology layout spanning controller chips, firmware, solution validation, and system adaptation. The company said that in addition to business development with domestic customers, it has advanced business discussions with some overseas enterprise customers and reached cooperation intentions, and overseas business expansion is expected to become a new growth driver for its enterprise storage business.

AWS Transform now enables migration of block storage data for NetApp Inc.'s unified data storage operating system, NetApp ONTAP, directly to Amazon FSx, allowing such migrations to run in the same wave as compute and network. NetApp executive Pravjit Tiwana said cloud migration projects often run longer and cost more than planned because customers must move applications, servers, networking, and storage separately, and that the combined offering simplifies the process, lowers migration risk, and helps customers reach AWS faster without changing how their applications operate. The integration broadens NetApp's total addressable market beyond its existing users and turns AWS migration projects into new cloud storage channels, though it also increases NetApp's reliance on AWS for distribution and adoption of this particular cloud service, exposing it to AWS pricing decisions and competing storage offerings. NetApp has delivered around 102% year-to-date return in 2026, more than fivefold the return of the broader S&P 500, with a market capitalization of approximately $45.39 billion, a trailing P/E of approximately 33.3x and a forward P/E of 23.7x. As per 13F filing data for Q2 2026, a total of 47 hedge funds held positions in the stock compared to 38 by the end of the first quarter, and BlackRock is the largest institutional investor with 18.9 million shares, representing 9.62% of outstanding shares.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation said its MonTitan enterprise SSD controller platform entered commercial production with two Tier 1 customers in the second quarter of 2026, with five additional Tier 1 customers expected to ramp production in the second half of the year. Management expects MonTitan to contribute 5-10% of total revenues exiting 2026. In August 2026, the company unveiled its MonTitan SSD Reference Design Kit, incorporating proprietary PerformaShape technology, and introduced the SM2524XT PCIe Gen5 DRAMless SSD controller built on TSMC's 6nm process, delivering sequential read speeds of up to 14 GB/s and random performance of up to 2.5 million input/output operations per second, with up to 25% higher performance per watt than its predecessor. Silicon Motion has shipped more than 5 billion controllers cumulatively over the past decade and averages more than 750 million NAND controller shipments annually. Earnings estimates for 2026 have moved up 130.6% to $11.16 over the past year, while 2027 estimates have increased 171.9% to $16.34. The stock has gained 203.4% over the past year, compared with the industry's growth of 157.6%, and carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

NetApp, Inc.'s NTAP shares have surged 147.2% in the past six months, far outpacing the Zacks Computer & Technology sector's 28.2% gain, the Zacks Computer-Storage Devices industry's 59.2% rise and the S&P 500's 15.9% advance. The company reported revenues of $2.03 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, representing 30% year-over-year growth, or 26% excluding the additional week, and raised its fiscal 2027 revenue guidance to $7.96-$8.26 billion. All-flash array revenues surged 47% year over year to $1.31 billion, public cloud revenues increased 28% to $206 million, and non-GAAP earnings per share rose 66% to $2.58, while non-GAAP operating margin expanded 610 basis points to 31.9%. NetApp also raised its fiscal 2027 non-GAAP earnings guidance to $9.73-$10.03 per share and returned $302 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Despite the momentum, non-GAAP gross margin contracted 50 basis points year over year to 70.6% on higher component costs and a greater product revenue mix, and management expects gross margin to decline sequentially to 67-68% in the second quarter.

Evercore upgraded NetApp to Outperform from In Line on Wednesday, with analyst Amit Daryanani raising his price target to $300 from $210. Shares rose 1.6% in premarket trading. Daryanani wrote that NetApp's roughly 17% FY27 revenue-growth guide leaves meaningful room for upside, with Q1 actuals plus the Q2 guide midpoint implying first-half growth of about 26% before decelerating to only about 9% in the second half, and even excluding Q1's extra week first-half growth remains about 24%. He said a return toward more traditional second-half seasonality and continued conversion of larger AI opportunities could support low-20% FY27 growth, and that NetApp could earn as much as $15 per share or more in the long run as its core storage business expands on double-digit revenue growth driven by artificial intelligence. The analyst also noted NetApp could lift EBIT margins by passing along rising NAND prices to customers, bringing gross margins to the high-60% range, while its total addressable market expands beyond traditional storage, supporting a path toward $11-12 of FY27 EPS and ultimately $15+ of EPS power.

Jim Cramer said on the October 1 episode of Mad Money that Everpure, Inc. could have more room to run after the stock gained 66% in the third quarter, when the S&P 500 rose just 2.03%. Cramer noted that Everpure, which joined the S&P 500 in September, has become a hyperscaler play after Meta chose it to handle some of its storage. The company expanded that business on August 10 with a design win for its DirectFlash technology with a second top-five hyperscaler, and its fiscal second-quarter 2027 results showed remaining performance obligations rising 44% year-over-year to approximately $4.1 billion and subscription annual recurring revenue up 20% to approximately $2.1 billion. On September 23, management maintained its fiscal 2027 revenue forecast of $5.03 billion to $5.07 billion and introduced a preliminary fiscal 2028 outlook of $7 billion to $7.3 billion, representing expected growth of 39% to 45%, with non-GAAP operating income projected at $1.7 billion to $1.9 billion versus fiscal 2027 guidance of $940 million to $960 million. Those gains have come alongside negative operating cash flow of approximately $136 million and negative free cash flow of approximately $238 million in the fiscal second quarter, a GAAP operating margin of 5.3% against a non-GAAP margin of 19.4%, and a forward earnings multiple of approximately 45x versus approximately 21.4x for storage competitor NetApp. Insider Monkey's database of more than 1,000 hedge funds showed 51 funds holding Everpure at the end of the second quarter, up from 47 in the prior quarter, with Renaissance Technologies the top holder and short interest at 2.88% of the public float as of mid-September.

Diskover Data announced a new collaboration with NetApp that extends the Diskover Platform's governed visibility and control to ONTAP and StorageGRID environments in media and entertainment, semiconductor design, and other file-intensive sectors. Under the collaboration, customers will be able to purchase Diskover Platform through NetApp beginning in November 2026, with the platform available now for NetApp ONTAP and StorageGRID environments. Diskover's DataDiscovery uses specialized scanners to index metadata in place across ONTAP and StorageGRID, capturing ownership, permissions, age, cost, and project context in a searchable, governed catalog. Diskover says customers typically reclaim 10 to 30 percent of their footprint, exceeding three million dollars in larger environments, with return on investment inside 30 to 60 days. Will Hall, Chief Executive Officer of Diskover Data, said the collaboration gives NetApp customers a governed, searchable view of the data behind their projects, while Sandeep Singh, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Platform at NetApp, said Diskover extends the NetApp ecosystem with specialized discovery for customers with file-intensive workloads.

NetApp shares jumped 6% in the afternoon session after the data storage company unveiled a new AI factory architecture at its Insight conference, according to TipRanks. The company also launched Keystone Sovereign for regulated markets and expanded its partnerships with Oracle and Supermicro. The combined package of AI factory architecture, sovereign cloud storage, and larger OEM ties sparked optimism among investors and analysts, who lifted their price targets on the back of the AI storage narrative. NetApp is up 113% since the beginning of the year and, at $226.50 per share, has set a new 52-week high. The stock has been volatile, with 12 moves greater than 5% over the last year, and its biggest recent move came four months ago, when it gained 26.4% after reporting first-quarter 2026 results that beat expectations, with revenue up 12.5% year-over-year to $1.95 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $2.43.

Nutanix's modeled Fair Value reference point has been lifted from about US$58.98 to roughly US$76.76, as analysts revisited their price targets on hybrid cloud demand. Needham raised its target to US$90, citing Nutanix support for external storage, centralized services and Kubernetes management that helps customers move workloads between on premise and public cloud. UBS set a US$80 target on improving demand tied to VMware migration and pipeline growth, while RBC Capital lifted its target to US$84 on encouraging product portfolio and partnership trends. Oppenheimer and KeyBanc raised their targets to US$80 and US$75 respectively, pointing to HyperConverged demand, AI related IT hardware cycles and server refresh activity. Alongside the higher Fair Value, the Revenue Growth assumption moved from roughly 12.48% to about 13.68%, the Net Profit Margin expectation shifted from about 14.95% to roughly 14.13%, the Future P/E multiple changed from about 35.4x to roughly 45.3x, and the Discount Rate adjusted from 8.64% to about 8.81%.

Micron Technology reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 non-GAAP earnings of $33.42 per share, up more than 11-fold from $3.03 a year earlier and beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 5.73%. Revenue surged 379.3% year over year to $54.23 billion, topping consensus by 6.33%, as tight DRAM and NAND conditions lifted pricing and AI demand drove data center growth. Data center SSD revenues approached $10 billion, more than 10 times the year-ago level and more than two-thirds of total NAND revenues. Wall Street closed higher Thursday after a volatile start to October trading, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 0.04% at 50,926.56, the Nasdaq Composite up 0.04% at 26,871.60, and the S&P 500 up 0.2% at 7,666.45. The rally came as yields on U.S. Treasury Notes retreated from 24-year highs, with the 10-Year yield falling six basis points and the 30-Year four basis points in late trading after hitting 5.344% and 5.636% intraday, respectively.

Toshiba, the Japanese technology group, plans to double its production capacity for hard disk drives used in data centers for artificial intelligence by fiscal 2027, as the AI boom drives demand for high-capacity storage devices. The Nikkei newspaper reported on October 2 that Toshiba will invest about 60 billion yen, or 380 million dollars, to expand its HDD plant in the Philippines, marking the company's first major drive investment in roughly five years. Toshiba, one of the world's three largest HDD makers, competing mainly with U.S. rivals Western Digital and Seagate, aims to raise its market share measured by storage capacity from more than 10 percent now to 30 percent in the medium term. The capacity expansion will include new production lines for HDDs with up to 40 percent higher capacity per unit, and supports Toshiba's plan to mass-produce 65-terabyte HDDs by 2030 before eventually moving to products with 100 terabytes of capacity. Demand for HDDs is strengthening with the expansion of AI infrastructure, as the lower storage cost compared with solid-state drives is prompting data centers to adopt more high-capacity HDDs.

NetApp introduced Novus, a new storage architecture built to maximize GPU utilization, at its Insight event on Tuesday, drawing a positive but measured response from Wall Street analysts. Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring said in a Wednesday note that Novus disaggregates metadata from the data path, allowing metadata, performance, and capacity to scale independently while maintaining a unified namespace, and that NetApp stated the architecture is designed to support AI environments exceeding 100TB/s of throughput and ultimately scale to zettabyte-sized deployments. Woodring said Morgan Stanley views Insight 2026 as further evidence that NetApp is extending its solution set and total addressable market beyond traditional enterprise storage, positioning itself as a broader AI data infrastructure platform, though the firm retained its Equal-weight rating and $191 price target. Citi highlighted that Novus addresses an AI storage market that could swell from $20B to $40B over the next three years, while maintaining its Neutral rating. Oppenheimer called the direction positive but said it awaits execution and feedback before turning bullish, keeping its Market Perform rating intact. NetApp shares inched up by noon trading on Wednesday.

NetApp is positioning its Keystone Sovereign offering to serve regulated industries in Europe, initially targeting qualified customers in Germany and France with additional European countries planned. The offering will provide additional regional, operational, support and data-handling controls intended to help qualified European customers keep critical data and support within specified geographic boundaries. Keystone is NetApp's storage-as-a-service offering, and its revenue grew about 65% in fiscal 2026; in first-quarter fiscal 2027, Professional Services revenues rose 15.5% to $112 million, mainly driven by continued Keystone growth. At NetApp's INSIGHT 2026 conference held yesterday, the company also announced NetApp Novus, a high-performance file system designed to feed data to GPUs, and native ONTAP storage support for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, alongside partnerships spanning SAP, Oracle and Super Micro Computer. NetApp shares have gained 76.5% in the past year compared with the Computer-Storage Devices industry's rise of 318.4%, and the stock carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

SAP and NetApp announced an expanded partnership focused on deeper cloud native integration into SAP Cloud Infrastructure. The collaboration aims to strengthen security, resilience, and performance for SAP and customer workloads running on SAP Cloud Infrastructure, plugging more of NetApp's storage and data services directly into the platform across multiple regions and availability zones. Both companies plan to explore joint go to market initiatives and assess new technology integrations within SAP Cloud Infrastructure services. SAP, a €213.6 billion software group, sells enterprise applications and business solutions that help large organisations run finance, operations and data heavy workflows. Investors are watching for validation of NetApp Object storage inside SAP Cloud Infrastructure, disclosures on joint go to market deals, and customer case studies showing SAP and non SAP workloads moving onto the platform at scale.

Cal-Comp Electronics (Thailand) Public Company Limited, or CCET, is benefiting from rising data storage demand driven by global data center investment, particularly in the Storage business across both HDD and SSD, as well as hardware products related to data centers and processing systems. The company has invested in expanding SSD production capacity and has a new plant that has already begun operations, which helps increase its readiness to accommodate shifts in product mix. Data from the Investors Association indicates that CCET has consumer SSD, data center SSD, and AI server SSD in its business plan. Meanwhile, Thailand is gaining an opportunity to attract a new wave of foreign direct investment from the expansion of the semiconductor, PCB, and advanced electronics industries, which will help enlarge the country's electronics ecosystem. Key issues to monitor going forward are order growth, the ramp-up of the new plant, an increasing share of SSD and value-added products, and maintaining margins in line with revenue expansion.

NetApp announced NetApp Keystone Sovereign, a new Storage-as-a-Service offering that will enable qualified European customers to use data sovereignty controls in support of their compliance and data residency journeys. The offering is designed to keep data and support within specified geographic boundaries through European-based data residency for relevant customer data, logs, backups, and telemetry, European-based support and escalation paths, European-controlled access and management processes, clear documentation of telemetry, monitoring, and data flows, and contractual and legal structures that reinforce sovereignty expectations. Ivan Iannaccone, Vice President and General Manager, Keystone at NetApp, said data sovereignty has become a strategic requirement as organizations demand greater control over the technical and operational conditions that govern their data. Initial pilots for Keystone Sovereign will be available for Germany and France, with additional countries planned to be added. Simon Robinson, Chief Analyst, Storage & Data Infrastructure at Omdia, said the market opportunity for offerings like NetApp Keystone Sovereign is emerging as customers move beyond generic data residency requirements toward broader assurances around technical oversight, operational access, and support boundaries.

NetApp announced new hybrid multi-cloud capabilities with autonomous controls designed to maximize enterprise flexibility and efficiency across on-premises and cloud environments. The offerings include NetApp Keystone Sovereign, which gives qualified European Economic Area customers data sovereignty controls covering data residency, technical, and regional considerations, and NetApp Console Autonomous Operations, which replaces manual approval loops with outcome-based automation that runs securely in air-gapped environments. NetApp Console Fleet Management adds a second Console delivery model installed directly in the customer's environment, while the NetApp Console AI ChatOps Interface delivers autonomous storage operations, intent-based provisioning, and policy guardrails across ONTAP storage systems through an open LLM gateway. NetApp also said it is partnering with Nutanix to combine NetApp ONTAP with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for virtualized workloads, with general availability scheduled for this fall. Sandeep Singh, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Platform at NetApp, said customers should not have to choose between the performance and control of on-premises infrastructure and the flexibility of cloud.

NetApp and Oracle announced a new fully managed storage service that brings enterprise-grade NetApp storage natively to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The service, called Oracle Cloud Infrastructure NetApp Storage Service, will bring NetApp ONTAP data management capabilities natively to OCI to help organizations simplify migration and management of critical AI and enterprise workloads in the cloud. It is designed to help enterprises migrate, run, protect, and modernize databases, enterprise applications, virtualized environments, EDA/HPC, regulated applications, and AI data pipelines while preserving familiar storage operations, and customers can manage it through the OCI Console and SDKs, ONTAP APIs, and familiar operational workflows. Pravjit Tiwana, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Storage and Services at NetApp, said customers want the flexibility to move AI and enterprise workloads to the cloud without giving up operational simplicity, data management, and reliability, while Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Senior Vice President of Partnerships at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, said enterprises shouldn't have to rebuild their data infrastructure to move to the cloud. Alvaro Celis, Senior Vice President, Chief Commercial, Partner and Ecosystem Officer at NetApp, said the partnership combines OCI's scale and performance with NetApp's enterprise data capabilities to help customers run mission-critical workloads, especially in regulated industries. OCI NetApp Storage Service is planned for general availability within the next 12 months.

Newegg Commerce announced on September 24 that Newegg Business is collaborating with Western Digital to help IT teams select and scale high-performance storage solutions, with Newegg Business hosting a live webinar titled "Realize the Full Power of Your AI NAS with WD Red Pro" on September 30, 2026. The session will highlight how Western Digital's purpose-built WD Red Pro HDDs power AI-driven Network Attached Storage systems for 24/7 multi-user IT environments. The partnership leans on Newegg's strengthening business and wholesale demand, which helped drive net income to $2.2 million in Q2 2026 even as overall net sales dipped 8.1% year-over-year to $320.4 million. For Western Digital, the tie-up extends a strong cycle in which Q4 FY26 revenue grew 44% year-over-year to $3.75 billion, non-GAAP gross margin reached 54.4%, and free cash flow hit $1.28 billion. Newegg still faces memory and flash shortages that pushed Q2 2026 GMV down 3.9% year-over-year to $403.2 million, while Western Digital remains exposed to cyclical storage demand and volatile component pricing.

Morgan Stanley raised its price target on TD Synnex Corp to $359 from $334, reiterating an Overweight rating and naming the technology distributor its most favored enterprise hardware name. The call followed fiscal third-quarter results in which revenue and earnings per share beat consensus estimates by 13%-21%, while fourth-quarter guidance came in 12%-25% above Street expectations. Morgan Stanley lifted its fiscal 2027 and 2028 earnings estimates by 12%-15%, citing stronger growth and operating leverage. Within the company, Distribution gross billings rose 27% year-on-year, while gross billings at Hyve Solutions, TD Synnex's data-centre infrastructure unit, jumped 117%, as enterprise AI demand shifted from experimentation toward production. Operating expenses fell to 3.63% of revenue, the lowest level in more than five years, and Morgan Stanley expects free cash flow to turn positive in the fourth quarter as investments in Hyve's new customer programs ease.

S&P Global Ratings revised its outlook on Western Digital to positive while affirming its BBB- credit rating, citing accelerating cash flow, low leverage and strong AI-related storage demand. Western Digital has also moved to redeem its remaining 3% convertible notes, a step the company frames as evidence its balance sheet can fund next-generation HDD and HAMR products. The company is actively highlighting AI-focused NAS and cloud storage solutions, with its key near-term catalyst being the qualification and ramp of higher-capacity drives with hyperscalers. The main risk cited is that a faster-moving rival captures more 44TB HAMR deployments. Western Digital's narrative projects $32.0 billion in revenue and $15.2 billion in earnings by 2029, requiring 35.3% yearly revenue growth and about a $5.9 billion earnings increase from $9.3 billion today, while the most bullish analysts picture US$36.1 billion of revenue by 2029.

Jabil shares jumped 4.8% in afternoon trading after Akamai Technologies authorized the electronics manufacturing services provider to buy approximately $1.7 billion of memory components on Akamai's behalf. Akamai disclosed the authorization in a filing, saying the purchase supports capital spending tied to its expanded agreement with Anthropic, which now totals $11.6 billion of contractual commitment over seven years. Akamai said capital spending tied to that commitment is about $5.5 billion, and that 2026 capital spending would rise by about $1.7 billion to pre-purchase components, including memory. Jabil was already Akamai's contract manufacturer under a 2019 agreement, and the filing does not say how much of the $1.7 billion Jabil keeps. After the initial pop, the shares cooled to $319.80, up 2.9% from the previous close.

NetApp raised its fiscal 2027 guidance after opening the year with record first-quarter revenue of $2.03 billion, up 30% year over year. The company now projects fiscal 2027 revenues between $7.98 billion and $8.23 billion, with the $8.10 billion midpoint implying 17% year-over-year growth and standing $650 million above the prior guidance. NetApp also lifted its operating margin forecast to 30.3-31.3% and its EPS guidance to $9.73-$10.03, with the midpoint representing 22% growth. In the quarter, NetApp secured roughly 350 AI and data lake modernization deals, while all-flash array revenues reached $1.31 billion, rising 47% year over year. Management said AI-driven modernization, robust all-flash demand and broader portfolio strength underpin confidence in sustaining momentum through the year.

Akamai Technologies surged 21.3% in premarket trading after announcing a seven-year, $11.6 billion cloud services commitment from AI company Anthropic, designed to support Anthropic's growing CPU workload demands across Akamai Cloud's distributed infrastructure. The deal includes provisions allowing the relationship to expand by up to an additional $9 billion, potentially taking the total commitment to about $20 billion, and Akamai also disclosed a hardware supply agreement with Lenovo and authorized contract manufacturer Jabil to procure about $1.7 billion in memory components. People Incorporated rose 6.5% in premarket trading after The Wall Street Journal reported that MGM Resorts International is weighing a potential takeover bid for Barry Diller's media conglomerate, with an offer potentially coming within days, just one day after People Incorporated withdrew its own $48.30-per-share cash proposal to acquire MGM's remaining public shares. Select Water Solutions rose 5.5% after announcing a definitive agreement to acquire Pilot Water Solutions for $700 million, plus up to $15 million in potential contingent consideration, in a transaction including $600 million in cash and $100 million in Class A common stock. Prime Medicine climbed 11.7% in after-hours trading to $3.49 after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared its Investigational New Drug application for PM647, an investigational in vivo Prime Editor designed to correct the E342K mutation in the SERPINA1 gene, the root cause of Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, paving the way for a global first-in-human Phase 1/2 clinical trial. On the downside, Comcast slipped 1.6% in premarket trading to $21.77 after KeyBanc downgraded the stock to Underweight from Sector Weight with an $18 price target, Twilio fell 3.7% after HSBC downgraded it to Reduce from Hold with a $211 price target, Zscaler fell 3.6% after naming Ross Tackett Chief Revenue Officer effective Oct. 1, succeeding Mike Rich, and Scholastic tumbled 11% after reporting fiscal first-quarter 2027 results that missed expectations, with revenue down 3.9% year over year to $216.8 million and an adjusted loss per share of $3.63.

Akamai shares surged about 13% in after-hours trading after Anthropic struck a $12 billion deal with the company for AI computing, with Akamai also discussing longer-term capital expenditure plans. The move made Akamai the biggest after-hours mover, climbing roughly 14%. In the regular session, Oracle fell 3.5% after sending a force majeure notice to a project developer, a unit of Blue Owl Capital, regarding a massive data center being built in New Mexico, a step tied to meeting power commitments that could delay rent for Oracle even as it would still owe the rent for the full lease term once payments begin. GoDaddy rose about 4.6% after the Financial Times reported that Gen Digital, the maker of Norton 360 antivirus, made an offer for the company in a deal that would roll up a number of major legacy software brands, though the talks are in early stages and may not lead to a deal; Gen Digital shares fell more than 12%. MGM Resorts dropped 11% after Barry Diller's People Inc dropped plans to acquire the rest of the casino giant, with Diller saying the mix was not coming together as hoped. Everpure was the top S&P 500 gainer, closing up about 11% after the data storage company forecast 2028 revenue above the average analyst estimate, drawing price target hikes from Citi to 160 from 130 a share and from B of A to 180 from 150 a share.

Everpure outlined four strategic growth vectors and issued a preliminary fiscal year 2028 outlook at its 2026 Financial Analyst Meeting, reaffirming its fiscal year 2027 revenue and operating income guidance. The company said its three new growth vectors — Modern Data Software, Scale AI, and Hyperscale Solutions — are expected to represent approximately 20% of total revenue by fiscal year 2030, alongside a Core and Core AI business projected to keep gaining market share. For fiscal year 2027, Everpure reaffirmed revenue of $5.03B to $5.07B, up 37% to 38% year over year, and non-GAAP operating income of $940M to $960M, up 48% to 51%. Its preliminary fiscal year 2028 outlook calls for revenue of $7.0B to $7.3B, up 39% to 45%, and non-GAAP operating income of $1.7B to $1.9B, up 80% to 100%. Chief Executive Officer Charlie Giancarlo said a decade of investment in an integrated, extensible architecture has created a structurally higher growth baseline, while Chief Financial Officer Tarek Robbiati said the financial profile is durably resetting to levels well above Rule of 40. Everpure also said it has dedicated an average of 19% of annual revenue to R&D on a non-GAAP basis over the past five years and has posted eight consecutive quarters of accelerating revenue growth.