Class Action Vs. Seagate by Shareholders Foundation

A lawsuit was filed on behalf of investors in Seagate Technology Holdings plc shares.

An investor, who purchased shares of Seagate, filed a lawsuit over alleged violations of Federal Securities Laws by Seagate in connection with certain allegedly false and misleading statements.

Investors who purchased shares of Seagate have certain options and for certain investors are short and strict deadlines running.

Deadline: September 8, 2023.

Ireland-based Seagate Technology Holdings plc provides storage technology and solutions in Singapore, USA, the Netherlands, and internationally.

On May 16, 2019, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and certain of its non-US affiliates were added to the US Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security’s (BIS) Export Administration Regulations (EAR) Entity List. The EAR Entity List is a list of names of certain foreign persons and entities that are subject to specific license requirements for the export, re-export, and/or transfer (in-country) of specified items. The Entity List designation was based on a determination made by multiple US government agencies “that there is reasonable cause to believe that Huawei has been involved in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”

Then, on August 17, 2020, the BIS imposed export controls over certain foreign-produced items “to better address the continuing threat to US national security and US foreign policy interests posed by Huawei and its non-US affiliates.”

On October 26, 2022, Seagate disclosed that it received a proposed charging letter from the BIS alleging that Seagate violated the EAR by providing Seagate HDDs to “a customer and its affiliates listed on the BIS Entity List between August 2020 and September 2021.”

Shares of Seagate Technology Holdings plc declined from $83.64 per share on August 11, 2022, to as low as $47.47 per share on November 03, 2022.

The plaintiff claims that between September 15, 2020 and October 25, 2022, the defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose the nature and magnitude of manufacturer’s HDD sales to Huawei, including that Seagate experienced a significant acceleration in sales to Huawei immediately after the BIS rules went into effect and Seagate’s competitors stopped selling to Huawei, and that the underlying details of Seagate’s HDD manufacturing process, including the use of covered US software and technology in “essential ‘production” processes, rendered its sales to Huawei in violation of the BIS export rules. As a result, the manufacturer was in blatant violation of the BIS export rules which resulted in an ongoing investigation by the US Department of Commerce and exposed Seagate to hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and penalties.

Those who purchased shares of Seagate have certain options and should contact the Shareholders Foundation, Inc.