Seagate Technology (STX) Gains as Wall Street Debates Ripple Investment

Seagate Technology (NASDAQ: STX) gained 7% Monday amid speculation about the company's investment in cryptocurrency Ripple. A blog post earlier argued that Seagate's investment in Ripple is worth $7.8 billion based on Ripple's XRP holdings of over $180 billion (before today's 25% plunge). Seagate invested in Ripple's 2015 $28m Series A and 2016 $55m Series B rounds.

While acknowledging the Ripple ownership, however, some analysts viewed the value of the stake as much less or not that important.

Cowen analyst Karl Ackerman thinks Seagate's worth as much as ~$2B (on paper), or roughly ~15% of STX’s market cap, note the $7.8 billion speculated upon. That said, Ackerman said a high degree of conservatism should be warranted when considering the value of Seagate's investment in Ripple.

Meanwhile, Susquehanna's Mehdi Hosseini said while the stake is "intriguing" they do not view this as a material upside driver given that it is an equity investment and not token ownership. As such, it is not a source of liquid cash. They would be a seller on today's strength related to the Ripple investment.

StreetInsider Premium first published a variation of this article at 8:54AM ET. Try StreetInsider Premium for two weeks free here.

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