TECHNOLOGY - May 3, 1997

Capping a week of good news for its investors, the stock of disk-drive maker Western Digital Inc. soared $6.25 a share to close at $70.50 on word of a 2-for-1 split in June. The company’s stock price rose by $15.375 on the New York Stock Exchange for the week, a gain of nearly 28%, as investors heard nothing but good words about Irvine-based Western Digital and the disk-drive industry overall. Western Digital’s split is to be payable on or near June 3 and will apply to investors who buy their stock no later than May 20. The rush to get in on the deal, analysts said, is what helped push the share price up by 9.7%. Also helping was an overall good market day for technology stocks and an upbeat report by a Merrill Lynch analyst on networking systems maker Cisco Systems Inc., said Paul Fox, an industry analyst with Montgomery Securities in San Francisco.