Western Digital Posts 1st-Quarter Profits : Finances: The Irvine-based company attributes its good performance to streamlining of its product line.

Western Digital Corp., posting profits for the second consecutive quarter, said Thursday that it has overcome a year of financial doldrums.

The Irvine-based company, which had weathered six quarterly losses in a row, said higher earnings in the past six months are a sign that its gamble on focusing its product line has paid off.

“We are very happy where we are,” said Roger W. Johnson, its chairman and chief executive. “I feel the best I have ever felt at Western Digital. I don’t think I’ve ever been as pleased with the overall business of the company.”

On Thursday, Western Digital announced first-quarter net income of $4.2 million, or 14 cents a share, for the period ending Sept. 26. That contrasts with a $37.9-million loss, or $1.30 a share, for the same period last year.

The company attributed the increase, in part, to a paring down of the number of employees in the past 18 months, from 7,700 to 6,300. Reducing the number of product lines, such as the discontinuation of a line of circuit boards, while investing more heavily in a new line of disk drives and graphics chips, also contributed to the company’s good performance.

In anticipation of a resurgence in sales, the company has recently hired about 1,000 employees, bringing the work force back to 7,300, Johnson said.

Partly because of the new line of products, the company posted first-quarter revenue of $271.1 million, up 36% from $199.1 million in the previous first quarter.

Western Digital recently began selling a new disk drive, shipping 16,000 units to systems manufacturers such as AST Research, Compaq Computers, Dell Computers and Tandy Corp. during the first quarter, Johnson said.

Getting a jump on the competition in the hard disk drive market has been part of the overall restructuring and strategy that Western Digital devised to counter bad financial times.

That strategy seems to be working, analysts said.

“I would not say they are out of the woods,” said analyst Jack Geraghty of Boston First Corp. in New York. “But they are certainly making strides. They have made good product decisions.”

Geraghty said the company has reason to cheer the positive earnings reports and a rebound of its shares on the stock market. But, he added, it must now begin dealing with the debt it acquired to remain solvent for the past year.

Western Digital currently owes $195 million in short-term debt that is due within a year. Geraghty said the company should be able to renegotiate the terms of the loan if it can prove that its profitability is long term.

Johnson said that “the company has been through some very difficult times” but expects that its new line of hard disk drives will spur continued growth for the foreseeable future.

“The losses we incurred were part of the changing of the business,” he said. “We wanted to make sure that when we came out the other side, we would maintain sustained profits. I think we are going to do that.”

Western Digital stock, traded on the New York Stock Exchange, closed at $6.75 a share, unchanged from Wednesday’s close. This is a dramatic increase from the company’s 52-week low in December, when its stock traded at $2.