SiliconBeat

Seagate Technology said Wednesday that it will have to take an impairment charge to write down the value of its goodwill, “largely as a result of the adverse impact of the current macroeconomic business environment on the Company’s long-term financial outlook,” according to a filing with the SEC.

In addition to the value of its goodwill — which is generally understood to represent “the value of a well-respected business name, good customer relations, high employee morale, and other such factors expected to translate into greater than normal earnings power,” according to Barron’s Dictionary of Financial and Investment Terms — Seagate said it would also be “evaluating its long-lived assets, principally, property, equipment and leasehold improvements and certain other intangible assets for impairment.”

The company said it expect expects that the impairments will be “material” but that “at the time of this filing, it is unable in good faith to make a determination of an estimate of the amount or range of amounts” of the charges.

Seagate shares fell 21 cents, or 4.8 percent, to close at $4.14 Wednesday. They have lost 84 percent of their value so far this year.

Yesterday, Seagate won a patent-infringement trial with Siemens, Europe’s largest engineering company, which was demanding $160 million over technology used to read computer data, according to Bloomberg News, which reported that a jury in Santa Ana found that even though Seagate infringed one of the German company’s patents, the patent was invalid and therefore Siemens is owed nothing.

Last week Fitch Ratings downgraded its debt ratings for the world’s largest maker of hard-disk drives, moving them into non-investment grade, or “junk” status after Seagate lowered its sales forecast for its current quarter earlier this month. Seagate cut its sales forecast for this quarter on Dec. 10 to $2.6 billion, down from the $2.85 billion estimate it provided in October, and much lower than the $2.93 billion analysts in a Bloomberg survey predicted.