Item 1. BUSINESS

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We are a leading provider of data storage technology and solutions. Our principal products are hard disk drives, commonly referred to as disk drives, hard drives or HDDs. In addition to HDDs, we produce a broad range of data storage products including solid state drives (“SSDs”), solid state hybrid drives (“SSHDs”) and storage subsystems.

Hard disk drives are devices that store digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating disks with magnetic surfaces. Disk drives continue to be the primary medium of mass data storage due to their performance attributes, reliability, high quality and cost effectiveness. Complementing existing data center storage architecture, solid state drives use integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data, and most SSDs use NAND flash memory. In addition to HDDs and SSDs, SSHDs combine the features of SSDs and HDDs in the same unit, containing a high capacity hard disk drive and a smaller SSD acting as a cache to improve performance of frequently accessed data.

Our HDD products are designed for nearline and mission critical applications in enterprise servers and storage systems; edge non-compute applications, where our products are designed for a wide variety of end user devices such as portable external storage systems, surveillance systems, network-attached storage (“NAS”), digital video recorders (“DVRs”) and gaming consoles; and edge compute applications, where our products are designed primarily for desktop and mobile computing. Our SSD product portfolio is mainly comprised of Serial Attached SCSI (“SAS”) and Non-Volatile Memory Express (“NVMe”) and is designed for applications in enterprise servers and storage systems.

Our enterprise data solutions (“EDS”) portfolio includes storage subsystems for enterprises, cloud service providers, scale-out storage servers and original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”).

Industry Overview

Data Storage Industry

The data storage industry includes companies that manufacture components or subcomponents designed for data storage devices and companies that provide storage solutions, software and services for enterprise cloud, big data, computing platforms and consumer markets. The rapid growth in data generation and the intelligent application of data are driving demand for data storage. As more data is created at endpoints outside traditional data centers and requires processing at the edge, the need for data storage and management has also increased. Examples of this include autonomous vehicles, smart manufacturing systems and smart cities. We believe the proliferation and personal creation of media-rich digital content, further enabled by fifth-generation wireless (“5G”), the edge, the Internet of things (“IoT”) and artificial intelligence (“AI”), will continue to create demand for higher capacity storage solutions. The new ecosystem is expected to require increasing amounts of data storage both at the edge and in enterprises that store the data.

Markets

The principal data storage markets include:

Enterprise Storage. We define enterprise storage as dedicated storage area networks and hyperscale cloud storage environments. Enterprise and cloud data centers run solutions which are designed for nearline, mission critical and enterprise SSD applications.

Nearline applications are defined as those which require high capacity and energy efficient storage solutions. We expect such applications, which include storage for cloud computing, content delivery and backup services, will continue to grow and drive exabyte demand. Additionally, with the increased requirements for storage capacity and performance driven by the creation and consumption of media-rich content, we expect that the increased exabyte demand will require further buildout of data centers by cloud service providers (“CSPs”) and other enterprises that use high-capacity nearline devices.

Mission critical applications are defined as those that use high performance enterprise class HDDs and SSDs with sophisticated firmware. Enterprise storage is vital to the operation of large-scale enterprise workloads, requiring high performance and high reliability storage solutions. We expect the market for mission critical enterprise storage solutions to continue to be driven by enterprises utilizing dedicated storage area networks.

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Edge Non-Compute. We define edge non-compute applications as solutions designed primarily for consumer electronic devices that require a higher capacity, low cost-per-gigabyte storage solution, including surveillance, NAS, DVRs and gaming. Consumer solutions support a variety of consumer and industrial needs with internal and external storage solutions. Disk Drives for external storage are designed for purposes such as portable external storage, and to augment storage capacity in the consumer’s current desktop, notebook, tablet or mobile phone device.

Edge Compute. We define edge compute applications as solutions designed for desktop and mobile compute applications ranging from traditional laptops to convertible systems. Some edge compute applications rely less on built-in storage and instead rely on cloud storage for long-term archiving.

Enterprise Data Solutions. We define enterprise data solutions as applications that provide end-to-end solutions to businesses for the purpose of modular systems and scale-out storage. Applications can contain HDDs and SSDs and may offer file management systems, software and compute power, enabling both private and public clouds.

Participants in the data storage industry include:

Major subcomponent manufacturers. Companies that manufacture components or subcomponents used in data storage devices or solutions include companies that supply spindle motors, heads and media, and application specific integrated circuits (“ASICs”).

Storage device manufacturers. Companies that transform components into storage products include disk drive manufacturers and semiconductor storage manufacturers which integrate flash memory into storage products such as SSDs.

Storage solutions manufacturers and system integrators. Companies, such as OEMs, that bundle and package storage solutions, distributors that integrate storage hardware and software into end-user applications, CSPs that provide cloud based solutions to businesses for the purpose of scale-out storage solutions and modular systems, and producers of solutions such as storage racks.

Hyperscale data centers. Large hyperscale data center companies, many of which are CSPs, are increasingly designing their own storage subsystems and having them built by contract manufacturers for use inside their own data centers. This trend is reshaping the storage system and subsystem market and driving innovation in system design and changes in the competitive landscape of large storage system vendors.

Storage services. Companies that provide and host services and solutions, which include storage, backup, archiving, recovery and discovery of data.

Demand for Data Storage

The International Data Corporation (“IDC”) forecasted in its 2018 Digitization of the World study that the global datasphere will grow from 33 zettabytes in 2018 to 175 zettabytes by 2025. According to IDC, we are fast approaching a new era of the data age, which we expect will have a positive impact on storage demand. The digital transformation has given rise to many new applications, all of which rely on faster access to and a secure storage of an increasing amount of data.

As more applications require real-time decision making, more data processing and storage is moving near the edge of the network, which we believe will result in a buildup in private and edge cloud environments that will enable fast and secure access to data throughout the IoT ecosystem.

Factors contributing to the growth of digital content include:

	•		Creation, sharing and consumption of media-rich content, such as high-resolution photos, high definition videos and digital music through smart phones, tablets, digital cameras, personal video cameras, DVRs, gaming consoles or other digital devices;

	•		Increasing use of video surveillance and the emergence of new surveillance systems which feature higher resolution digital cameras and thus require larger data storage capacities;

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	•		Creation and collection of data through the development and evolution of the IoT ecosystem, big data analytics, artificial intelligence and new technology trends such as self-driving cars and drones, smart manufacturing, and smart cities;

	•		The growing need for analysis of and action upon data created at the edge instead of processing and analyzing such data at data centers, which is particularly the case in verticals such as autonomous vehicles, property monitoring systems, smart manufacturing and others;

	•		Continued advancement of the cloud, including the build out of large numbers of cloud data centers by CSPs and private companies transitioning on-site data centers into the cloud; and

	•		Need for protection of increased digital content through redundant storage on backup devices and externally provided storage services.

As a result of these factors, we anticipate that the nature and volume of content being created will require greater storage capability, which is more efficiently and economically facilitated by higher capacity storage devices in order to store, aggregate, host, distribute, analyze, manage, protect, backup and use such content.

In addition, the economics of storage infrastructure are also evolving with the utilization of public and private hyperscale storage and open-source solutions reducing the total cost of ownership of storage while increasing the speed and efficiency with which customers can leverage massive computing and storage devices. Accordingly, we expect these trends will continue to create significant demand for data storage solutions going forward.

Demand Trends

We believe that continued growth in digital content creation requires increasingly higher storage capacity in order to store, aggregate, host, distribute, analyze, manage, protect, back up and use such content. We also believe that as architectures evolve to serve the growing commercial and consumer user base throughout the world, the storage solutions will evolve as well.

We expect increased data creation will lead to the expansion of the need for storage in the form of HDDs, EDS and SSDs. While the advance of solid state technology in many end markets is expected to increase, we believe that in the foreseeable future, cloud, traditional enterprise, edge non-compute and edge compute markets that require high-capacity storage solutions will be best served by hard disk drives due to their ability to deliver the most cost effective, reliable and energy-efficient mass storage devices. We also believe that as hard disk drive capacities continue to increase, a focus exclusively on unit demand does not reflect the increase in demand for exabytes. As demand for higher capacity drives increases, the demand profile has shifted to reflect fewer total HDD units, but with higher average capacity per drive and higher overall exabyte demand.

Industry Supply Balance

From time to time, the storage industry has experienced periods of imbalance between supply and demand. To the extent that the storage industry builds or maintains capacity based on expectations of demand that do not materialize, price erosion may become more pronounced. Conversely, during periods where demand exceeds supply, price erosion is generally muted.

Our Business

Data Storage Technologies

The design and manufacturing of HDDs depends on highly advanced technology and manufacturing techniques. Therefore, it requires high levels of research and development spending and capital equipment investments. We design, fabricate and assemble a number of the most important components in our disk drives, including read/write heads and recording media. Our design and manufacturing operations are based on technology platforms that are used to produce various disk drive products that serve multiple data storage applications and markets. Our core technology platforms, including upcoming innovations like the throughput-optimizing MACH.2 and the high-capacity enabling heated-assisted magnetic reading (“HAMR”), are focused around the areal density of media and read/write head technologies. This design and manufacturing approach allows us to deliver a portfolio of disk drive products to service a wide range of data storage applications and industries.

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Disk drives that we manufacture are commonly differentiated by the following key characteristics:

	•		input/output operations per second (“IOPS”), commonly expressed in megabytes per second, which is the maximum number of reads and writes to a storage location;

	•		storage capacity, commonly expressed in terabytes (“TB”), which is the amount of data that can be stored on the disk drive;

	•		spindle rotation speed, commonly expressed in revolutions per minute (“RPM”), which has an effect on speed of access to data;

	•		interface transfer rate, commonly expressed in megabytes per second, which is the rate at which data moves between the disk drive and the computer controller;

	•		average seek time, commonly expressed in milliseconds, which is the time needed to position the heads over a selected track on the disk surface;

	•		data transfer rate, commonly expressed in megabytes per second, which is the rate at which data is transferred to and from the disk drive;

	•		product quality and reliability, commonly expressed in annualized return rates; and

	•		energy efficiency, commonly measured by the power output necessary to operate the disk drive.

Areal density is measured by storage capacity per square inch on the recording surface of a disk. The storage capacity of a disk drive is determined by the size and number of disks it contains as well as the areal density capability of these disks.

We also offer SSDs as part of our storage solutions portfolio. Our portfolio includes devices with SAS and NVMe interfaces. The SSDs differ from HDDs in that they are without mechanical parts.

SSDs store data on NAND flash memory cells, or metal-oxide semiconductor transistors using a charge on a capacitor to represent a binary digit. SSD technology offers fast access to data and robust performance. SSDs complement mission-critical enterprise applications, hyperscale applications, high-density data centers, cloud environments and web servers.

The SSHDs that we manufacture contain a technology that fuses some features of SSDs and HDDs. They include high capacity HDDs with flash memory that acts as a cache to improve performance of frequently accessed data.

Manufacturing

We design and produce our own read/write heads and recording media, which are critical technologies for disk drives. This integrated approach enables us to lower costs and to improve the functionality of components so that they work together efficiently.

We believe that because of our vertical design and manufacturing strategy, we are well suited to take advantage of the opportunities to leverage the close interdependence of components for disk drives. Our manufacturing efficiency and flexibility are critical elements of our integrated business strategy. We continuously seek to improve our manufacturing efficiency and reduce manufacturing costs by:

	•		employing manufacturing automation;

	•		employing machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence;

	•		improving product quality and reliability;

	•		integrating our supply chain with suppliers and customers to enhance our demand visibility and reduce our working capital requirements;

	•		coordinating between our manufacturing group and our research and development organization to rapidly achieve volume manufacturing; and

	•		operating our facilities at optimal capabilities.

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A vertically integrated model, however, tends to have less flexibility when demand moderates as it exposes us to higher unit costs when capacity utilization is not optimized.

Components and Raw Materials

Disk drives incorporate certain components, including a head disk assembly and a printed circuit board mounted to the head disk assembly, which are sealed inside a rigid base and top cover containing the recording components in a contamination controlled environment. We maintain a highly integrated approach to our business by designing and manufacturing a significant portion of the components we view as critical to our products, such as read/write heads and recording media.

Read/Write Heads. The function of the read/write head is to scan across the disk as it spins, magnetically recording or reading information. The tolerances of read/write heads are extremely demanding and require state-of-the-art equipment and processes. Our read/write heads are manufactured with thin-film and photolithographic processes similar to those used to produce semiconductor integrated circuits, though challenges related to magnetic film properties and topographical structures are unique to the disk drive industry. We perform all primary stages of design and manufacture of read/write heads at our facilities. We use a combination of internally manufactured and externally sourced read/write heads, the mix of which varies based on product mix, technology and our internal capacity levels.

Media. Data is written to or read from the media, or disk, as it rotates at very high speeds past the read/write head. The media is made from non-magnetic substrates, usually an aluminum alloy or glass and is coated with thin layers of magnetic materials. We use a combination of internally manufactured and externally sourced finished media and aluminum substrates, the mix of which varies based on product mix, technology and our internal capacity levels. We purchase all of our glass substrates from third parties.

Printed Circuit Board Assemblies. The printed circuit board assemblies (“PCBAs”) are comprised of standard and custom ASICs and ancillary electronic control chips. The ASICs control the movement of data to and from the read/write heads and through the internal controller and interface, which communicates with the host computer. The ASICs and control chips form electronic circuitry that delivers instructions to a head positioning mechanism called an actuator to guide the heads to the selected track of a disk where the data is recorded or retrieved. Disk drive manufacturers use one or more industry standard interfaces such as serial advanced technology architecture (“SATA”), small computer system interface (“SCSI”), or SAS to communicate to the host systems.

Head Disk Assembly. The head disk assembly consists of one or more disks attached to a spindle assembly powered by a spindle motor that rotates the disks at a high constant speed around a hub. Read/write heads, mounted on an arm assembly, similar in concept to that of a record player, fly extremely close to each disk surface and record data on and retrieve it from concentric tracks in the magnetic layers of the rotating disks. The read/write heads are mounted vertically on an E-shaped assembly (“E-block”) that is actuated by a voice-coil motor to allow the heads to move from track to track. The E-block and the recording media are mounted inside the head disk assembly. We purchase spindle motors from outside vendors and from time to time participate in the design of the motors that go into our products.

Disk Drive Assembly. Following the completion of the head disk assembly, it is mated to the PCBA, and the completed unit goes through extensive defect mapping and machine learning prior to packaging and shipment. Disk drive assembly and machine learning operations occur primarily at our facilities located in China and Thailand. We perform subassembly and component manufacturing operations at our facilities in China, Malaysia, Northern Ireland, Singapore, Thailand and the United States.

Contract Manufacturing. We outsource the manufacturing and assembly of certain components and products to third parties in various countries worldwide. This includes outsourcing the PCBAs used in our disk drives, SSDs and storage subsystems. We continue to participate in the design of our components and products and are directly involved in qualifying key suppliers and components used in our products.

Suppliers of Components and Industry Constraints. There are a limited number of independent suppliers of components, such as recording heads and media, available to disk drive manufacturers. Vertically integrated disk drive manufacturers, who

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manufacture their own components, are less dependent on external component suppliers than less vertically integrated disk drive manufacturers. However, our business has been adversely affected by our suppliers’ capacity constraints in the past and this could occur again.

Commodity and Other Manufacturing Costs. The production of disk drives requires rare earth elements, precious metals, scarce alloys and industrial commodities, which are subject to fluctuations in price and the supply of which has at times been constrained. In addition to increased costs of components and commodities, volatility in fuel costs may also increase our costs related to commodities, manufacturing and freight. As a result, we may increase our use of alternative shipment methods to help offset any increase in freight costs, and we will continually review various forms of shipments and routes in order to minimize the exposure to higher freight costs.

Products

We offer a broad range of storage solutions for enterprise, data center, edge non-compute and edge compute applications. We offer more than one product within each product category and differentiate products on the basis of capacity, performance, product quality, reliability, price, form factor, interface, power consumption efficiency, security features and other customer integration requirements. Our industry is characterized by continuous and significant advances in technology which contribute to rapid product life cycles. Currently our product offerings include:

Enterprise Storage

Enterprise Capacity. Our enterprise capacity hard drives ship in 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch form factors and in storage capacities of up to 16TB. These products are designed for mass capacity data storage, server environments and cloud systems that require high capacity, enterprise reliability, energy efficiency and integrated security. They are available in SATA and SAS interfaces. We also offer low-cost storage options designed specifically for active archive storage environments.

Enterprise Performance HDDs and SSDs. We continue to support 10,000 and 15,000 RPM HDDs, which enable increased throughput and improve energy efficiency. Our enterprise SSDs are available in capacities up to 15TB with endurance options up to 10 drive writes per day (“DWPD”) and various interfaces. Our SSDs deliver the speed and consistency needed for demanding enterprise storage and server applications.

Edge Non-Compute Applications

Surveillance. Our surveillance HDDs are built to support the high-write workload of an always-on, always-recording video surveillance system. These surveillance optimized drives are built to support the growing needs of the surveillance market with support for multiple streams and capacities up to 16TB.

NAS. Our NAS drives are built to support the performance and reliability demanded by small and medium businesses, and incorporate interface software with custom-built health management, error recovery controls, power settings and vibration tolerance. Our NAS HDD solutions are available in capacities up to 16TB.

Video. Our Video HDDs are used in video applications like DVRs and media centers. These disk drives are optimized for video streaming in always-on applications with capacities up to 4TB to support leading-edge digital entertainment.

Gaming. Gaming HDDs are specifically optimized for console gaming usage. These products are designed to enhance the gaming experience during game-load and game-play and are available in capacities up to 8TB.

Consumer Solutions. Our external storage solutions are shipped under the Seagate Backup Plus and Expansion product lines, as well as under the LaCie and Maxtor brand names. These product lines are available in capacities up to 168TB. We strive to deliver the best customer experience, by leveraging our core technologies, offering services such as Seagate Recovery Services (data recovery) and partnering with leading brands such as Xbox, Sony and Adobe.

Edge Compute Applications

Desktop HDDs. Our 3.5-inch desktop drives ship in both traditional HDD and SSHD configurations and offer up to 14TB of capacity. Desktop drives are designed for applications such as personal computers and workstations.

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Mobile HDDs. Our 2.5-inch laptop drives ship in a variety of capacities (up to 5TB) and technologies (HDD and SSHD) to support mobile needs. Used in applications ranging from traditional laptops, convertible systems and external storage, our drives are built to address a range of performance needs and sizes for affordable, high capacity storage.

Customers

We sell our products to major OEMs, distributors and retailers.

OEM customers, including large hyperscale data center companies, typically enter into master purchase agreements with us. These agreements provide for pricing, volume discounts, order lead times, product support obligations and other terms and conditions including sales programs offered to promote selected products. Deliveries are scheduled only after receipt of purchase orders. In addition, with limited lead-time, customers may defer most purchase orders without significant penalty. Anticipated orders from many of our customers have in the past failed to materialize or OEM delivery schedules have been deferred or altered as a result of changes in their business needs.

Our distributors generally enter into non-exclusive agreements for the resale of our products. They typically furnish us with a non-binding indication of their near-term requirements and product deliveries are generally scheduled accordingly. The agreements and related sales programs typically provide the distributors with limited rights of return and price protection rights. In addition, we offer sales programs to distributors on a quarterly and periodic basis to promote the sale of selected products in the sales channel.

Our retail channel consists of our branded storage products sold to retailers either by us directly or by our distributors. Retail sales made by us or our distributors typically require greater marketing support, sales incentives and price protection periods.

See “Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data—Note 13. B_usiness Segment and Geographic Information_” contained in this report for a description of our major customers.

Competition

We compete primarily with manufacturers of hard drives used in the enterprise, edge non-compute and edge compute applications and with other companies in the data storage industry that provide SSDs and EDS. Some of the principal factors used by customers to differentiate among data storage solutions manufacturers are storage capacity, product performance, product quality and reliability, price per unit and price per terabyte, storage/retrieval access times, data transfer rates, form factor, product warranty and support capabilities, supply continuity and flexibility, power consumption, total cost of ownership and brand. While different markets and customers place varying levels of emphasis on these factors, we believe that our products are competitive with respect to many of these factors in the markets that we currently address.

Principal Competitors. We compete with manufacturers of storage solutions and the principal manufacturers in the data storage solution industry include:

	•		Seagate, selling the Seagate, LaCie and Maxtor brands;

	•		Micron Technology, Inc.;

	•		Samsung Electronics;

	•		SK hynix, Inc.;

	•		Toshiba Memory Holdings Corporation;

	•		Toshiba Corporation; and

	•		Western Digital Corporation, operating the Western Digital and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies subsidiaries and SanDisk.

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Price Erosion. Historically, our industry has been characterized by price declines for data storage products with comparable capacity, performance and feature sets (“like-for-like products”). Price declines for like-for-like products (“price erosion”) tend to be more pronounced during periods of:

	•		economic contraction in which competitors may use discounted pricing to attempt to maintain or gain market share;

	•		few new product introductions when competitors have comparable or alternative product offerings; and

	•		industry supply exceeding demand.

Data storage manufacturers typically attempt to offset price erosion with an improved mix of data storage products characterized by higher capacity, better performance and additional feature sets and product cost reductions.

We believe the data storage industry experienced modest price erosion in fiscal years 2019, 2018 and 2017.

Product Life Cycles and Changing Technology. Success in our industry has been dependent to a large extent on the ability to balance the introduction and transition of new products with time-to-volume, performance, capacity and quality metrics at a competitive price, level of service and support that our customers expect. Generally, the drive manufacturer that introduces a new product first benefits from improved product mix, favorable profit margins and less pricing pressure until comparable products are introduced. Changing technology also necessitates on-going investments in research and development, which may be difficult to recover due to rapid product life cycles and economic declines. Further, there is a continued need to successfully execute product transitions and new product introductions, as factors such as quality, reliability and manufacturing yields continue to be of significant competitive importance.

Seasonality

The disk drive industry traditionally experiences seasonal variability in demand with higher levels of demand in the second half of the calendar year. This seasonality is driven by consumer spending in the back-to-school season from late summer to fall and the traditional holiday shopping season from fall to winter. Beyond traditional seasonality, variability of sales can be related to the timing of IT spending or a reflection of cyclical demand from CSPs based on the timing of their procurement and deployment requirements and the supply and demand balance of other components such as NAND and DRAM.

Research and Development

We are committed to developing new component technologies, products and alternative storage technologies. Our research and development focus is designed to bring new products to market in high volume, with quality attributes that our customers expect, before our competitors. Part of our product development strategy is to leverage a design platform and/or subsystem within product families to serve different market needs. This platform strategy allows for more efficient resource utilization, leverages best design practices, reduces exposure to changes in demand, and allows for achievement of lower costs through purchasing economies. Our advanced technology integration effort focuses disk drive and component research on recording subsystems, including read/write heads and recording media; market-specific product technology; and technology we believe may lead to new business opportunities. The primary purpose of our advanced technology integration effort is to ensure timely availability of mature component technologies for our product development teams as well as to allow us to leverage and coordinate those technologies in the design centers across our products in order to take advantage of opportunities in the marketplace.

Patents and Licenses

As of June 28, 2019, we had approximately 6,000 U.S. patents and 1,300 patents issued in various foreign jurisdictions as well as approximately 900 U.S. and 500 foreign patent applications pending. The number of patents and patent applications will vary at any given time as part of our ongoing patent portfolio management activity. Due to the rapid technological change that characterizes the data storage industry, we believe that, in addition to patent protection, the improvement of existing products, reliance upon trade secrets, protection of unpatented proprietary know-how and development of new products are also important to our business in establishing and maintaining a competitive advantage. Accordingly, we intend to continue our efforts to broadly protect our intellectual property, including obtaining patents, where available, in connection with our research and development program.

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The data storage industry is characterized by significant litigation arising from time to time relating to patent and other intellectual property rights. From time to time, we receive claims that our products infringe patents of third parties. Although we have been able to resolve some of those claims or potential claims without a material adverse effect on us, other claims have resulted in adverse decisions or settlements. In addition, other claims are pending, which if resolved unfavorably to us could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations. For more information on these claims, see “Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data—Note 14. Legal, Environmental and Other Contingencies.” The costs of engaging in intellectual property litigation in the past have been, and in the future may be, substantial, irrespective of the merits of the claim or the outcome.

Backlog

In view of industry practice, whereby customers may cancel or defer orders with little or no penalty, we believe backlog for our business is of limited indicative value in estimating future performance and results.

Environmental Matters

Our operations are subject to U.S. and foreign laws and regulations relating to the protection of the environment, including those governing discharges of pollutants into the air and water, the management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes and the cleanup of contaminated sites. Some of our operations require environmental permits and controls to prevent and reduce air and water pollution, and these permits are subject to modification, renewal and revocation by issuing authorities.

We have established environmental management systems and continually update environmental policies and standard operating procedures for our operations worldwide. We believe that our operations are in material compliance with applicable environmental laws, regulations and permits. We budget for operating and capital costs on an ongoing basis to comply with environmental laws. If additional or more stringent requirements are imposed on us in the future, we could incur additional operating costs and capital expenditures.

Some environmental laws, such as the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (as amended, the “Superfund” law) and its state equivalents, can impose liability for the cost of cleanup of contaminated sites upon any of the current or former site owners or operators or upon parties who sent waste to these sites, regardless of whether the owner or operator owned the site at the time of the release of hazardous substances or the lawfulness of the original disposal activity. We have been identified as a responsible or potentially responsible party at several sites. At each of these sites, we have an assigned portion of the financial liability based on the type and amount of hazardous substances disposed of by each party at the site and the number of financially viable parties. We have fulfilled our responsibilities at some of these sites and remain involved in only a few at this time.

While our ultimate costs in connection with these sites are difficult to predict, based on current estimates of cleanup costs and our expected allocation of these costs, we do not expect costs in connection with these sites to be material.

We may be subject to various state, federal and international laws and regulations governing environmental matters, including those restricting the presence of certain substances in electronic products. For example, the European Union (“EU”) has enacted the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment, which prohibits the use of certain substances, including lead, in certain products, including disk drives and server storage products, put on the market after July 1, 2006. Similar legislation has been or may be enacted in other jurisdictions, including in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, China, Japan and others. The European Union REACH Directive (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals, EC 1907/2006) also restricts substances of very high concern (“SVHCs”) in products.

Employees

At June 28, 2019, we employed approximately 40,500 employees and temporary employees worldwide, of which approximately 33,500 were located in our Asia operations. We believe that our future success will depend in part on our ability to attract and retain qualified employees at all levels. We believe that our employee relations are good.

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Financial Information

Financial information for our reportable business segment and about geographic areas is set forth in “Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data-Note 13. Business Segment and Geographic Information.”

Corporate Information

Seagate Technology public limited company is a public limited company organized under the laws of Ireland.

Available Information

Availability of Reports. We are a reporting company under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “1934 Exchange Act”), and we file reports, proxy statements and other information with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). Because we make filings to the SEC electronically, the public may access this information at the SEC’s website: www.sec.gov. This site contains reports, proxies and information statements and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC.

Website Access. Our website is www.seagate.com. We make available, free of charge at the “Investor Relations” section of our website (investors.seagate.com), our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the 1934 Exchange Act as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such materials with, or furnish them to, the SEC. Reports of beneficial ownership filed pursuant to Section 16(a) of the 1934 Exchange Act are also available on our website.

Investors. Investors and others should note that we routinely use the Investor Relations section of our website to announce material information to investors and the marketplace. While not all of the information that the Company posts on its corporate website is of a material nature, some information could be deemed to be material. Accordingly, the Company encourages investors, the media and others interested in the Company to review the information that it shares on www.seagate.com. Information in, or that can be accessed through, our website is not incorporated into this Form 10-K.

Executive Officers

The following sets forth the name, age and position of each of the persons who were serving as executive officers as of August 2, 2019. There are no family relationships among any of our executive officers.

Name		Age				Positions
William D. Mosley			52			Director and Chief Executive Officer
Gianluca Romano			50			Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
James J. Murphy(a)			60			Executive Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing
Jeffrey D. Nygaard			55			Executive Vice President, Global Operations
Katherine E. Schuelke			56			Senior Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary

(a)	Mr. Murphy is leaving the Company and will remain for an interim transition period until December 31, 2019.

William D. Mosley, 52, has served as our Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”) since October 2017 and as a member of the Board since July 25, 2017. He was previously our President and Chief Operating Officer (“COO”) from June 2016 to September 2017. He also served as our President of Operations and Technology from October 2013 to June 2016 and as our Executive Vice President of Operations from March 2011 until October 2013. Prior to these positions, Dr. Mosley served as Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing from February 2009 through March 2011; Senior Vice President of Global Disk Storage Operations from 2007 to 2009; and Vice President of Research and Development, Engineering from 2002 to 2007. He joined Seagate in 1996 as a Senior Engineer with a PhD in solid state physics. From 1996 to 2002, he served at Seagate in varying roles of increasing responsibility until his promotion to Vice President.

Gianluca Romano, 50, has served as our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer since January 2019. From October 2011 to December 2018, Mr. Romano served as Corporate Vice President, Business Finance and Accounting at Micron Technology, Inc. Prior to his role at Micron, Mr. Romano served as Vice President Finance, Corporate Controller at Numonyx, Inc. from 2008 to 2010. From 1994 until 2008, Mr. Romano held various finance positions at STMicroelectronics, most recently as Group Vice-President, Central & North Europe Finance Director, Shared Accounting Services Director.

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James J. Murphy, 60, has served as our Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing since January 2017. From 2003 to 2016, Mr. Murphy was employed by Western Digital Corporation where he served in a variety of executive leadership roles including President of Western Digital Corporation, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales & Sales Operations, and Vice President of Asia Pacific sales. Mr. Murphy began his career with IBM in 1984 in the sales organization, where he held a number of sales roles with increasing responsibilities over a seven-year period.

Jeffrey D. Nygaard, 55, has served as our Executive Vice President, Operations, Product Development and Technology Development since November 2018. Mr. Nygaard also served as our Executive Vice President, Global Operations from October 2017 to November 2018; Senior Vice President, Global Operations and Supply Chain from March 2017 to October 2017; Senior Vice President, Recording Head Operations from May 2013 to February 2017; Vice President Slider, HGA, HSA Operations from 2011 to April 2013; Vice President and Country Manager, Thailand and Penang Operations from 2009 to 2011; Vice President and Country Manager, Thailand Operations and Asia Drive Engineering from 2006 to 2009; and Vice President, Product and Process Development from 2004 to 2006. From 1994 to 2006, Mr. Nygaard served in varying roles of increasing responsibilities in engineering at Seagate until his promotion to Vice President. Mr. Nygaard began his career with Raytheon and IBM where he held positions as a design engineer and senior engineer.

Katherine E. Schuelke, 56, has served as our Senior Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary since June 2017. From 2011 to January 2016, Ms. Schuelke was the Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary at Altera Corporation (“Altera”). Prior to that, Ms. Schuelke was Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary at Altera from 2001 to 2011. At Altera, she held other positions of increasing responsibility from 1996 through 2001. Ms. Schuelke began her career at an international law firm.

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