History (1994): Behind Seagate, Quantum Now in Front of Conner

Quantum Corp. is over the $2 billion level in its fiscal year.

With $2.131 billion, the company is going in front of Conner Peripherals who ended its last fiscal year on December 31 with $2.152 billion.

Currently, sales in the first 1994 calendar quarter effectively amounted to $564 million compared to $635 million for Quantum, now ≠2 independent storage company behind Seagate.

This position should even strengthen. Conner’s sales in its March quarter were 2% lower compared to the previous quarter.

Seagate is still living well with record results in its quarter ending April 1. And additionally, its cash and marketable securities represented $1.2 billion. Alan F. Shugart, president CEO and COB, expects revenue to reach at least $6 billion by FY99, with $4 billion from storage products, $1 billion from components and $1 billion from software.

For several quarters, Quantum has been the largest WW HDD supplier in number of units with 3.3 million shipped last quarter, Seagate being second with just over 3 million.

But Quantum only sells HDDs when Conner reported $100 million for its non-disk business (QIC cartridges, DATs, Arcada software).

Last March, Quantum reached 25 million drives, 84% of which occurred between 1991 and 1993 During the last quarter, Apple represented 15% of total revenues of Quantum, Apple was Compaq’s second customer with 10%, OEMs accounted for 78% for Quantum, 77% for Conner.

The strong demand and the better pricing let both companies largely improve their profits. Gross margins of Conner increased from 10.9 to 17.8%.

The year looks rather good for the 2 companies, especially for Conner’s 210/420MB series, and Quantum’s 170/270MB range.

Mainly since the allocation period has not ended yet.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 76, published on May 1994.