A warning from one of the storage industry’s most connected insiders is raising major concerns. Khein-Seng Pua, CEO of Phison Electronics, a company that controls roughly 20% of the global SSD controller market, recently offered a stark assessment of where the memory...
. Deliverables for the month of February 2026
HP Inc. earnings point to memory inflation challenge
HP Inc. has just reported its first fiscal quarter of 2026, showing an 11% year-over-year jump in Personal Systems revenue to 10.3 billion dollars and a 12% growth in PC units shipped . But the real story is that memory inflation is now reshaping the economics of hardware, with HP warning that surging DRAM and NAND costs, along with U.S. trade regulations, are pressuring margins and weighing on its full-year outlook.
IntelliTAD #13: Early Investment, Early Returns: ITAD’s First Seven Weeks of 2026 Signal a Widening Gap
The first seven weeks of 2026 have been anything but quiet. A $633 million ITAD revenue quarter at Iron Mountain. A ransomware gang claiming they breached a key industry player. Two major M&A deals closing before the calendar even found its footing. A European expansion wave that may help redraw the competitive map. And a rare earth recovery partnership that puts ITAD squarely inside the U.S. national security conversation. This edition covers the full January 1 – February 21, 2026 period — every material development we tracked across the 60-plus companies on our watch list, organized by the themes that matter most to your business.
Some takeaways from this issue:
→ DDR4 memory prices surged more than 450% year-over-year — a wake-up call for operators still treating memory as commodity shred.
→ SK tes and Paladin both made significant European moves driven by hyperscale customers ahead of May’s EU DIWASS deadline.
→ Park Place and Service Express completed their merger, forming one of the largest independent aftermarket data center services platforms in the world.
→ Apto Solutions partnered with Tusaar to recover rare earth materials from shredded hard drives for the U.S. DoD supply chain.
Umicore highlights strength in recycling, catalysis
Belgian materials technology group Umicore reported higher revenue and profit for 2025, calling it “a pivotal year for Umicore.” The company said the launch of its CORE strategy reinforced leadership in its foundation businesses while it took steps to restore value in battery materials.
Apto, Tusaar partner on rare earths recovery
IT asset disposition provider Apto Solutions has teamed up with Tusaar, a US-based rare earth elements processor, to recover and reuse critical materials from retired technology inside the United States. The collaboration centers on capturing rare earths from shredded hard drives and sending those materials into Tusaar’s domestic processing stream rather than letting them disappear into conventional recycling and export‑oriented channels.
Technology: How AI’s Breakneck Pace Is Outrunning Enterprise Strategy and Your IT Refresh Cycle
It took 12 days for Anthropic to release two major AI models back to back. And with each release, the capability bar moves up, software value gets questioned, and the hardware underneath it all turns over faster than your refresh cycle was ever designed to handle. This episode is a straight-talk breakdown of what that pace means for enterprise IT strategy, ITAM programs, and ITAD operations. This is not AI hype, but an honest analysis on the very real decisions landing on your desk right now as a result of it.
SIMS and Iron Mountain Are Repricing the ITAD and Positioning it as a Primary Growth Engine
In this episode, David Daoud of Compliance Standards LLC examines how Sims Limited and Iron Mountain are repositioning IT asset disposition from an operational afterthought to a primary growth engine inside publicly traded platforms. Both companies recently reported approximately 70% year-over-year growth in their ITAD divisions. More importantly, they elevated Asset Lifecycle Management and Sims Lifecycle Services in their earnings narratives, capital allocation priorities, and forward guidance.
Sims Lifecycle leverages hyperscale decommissioning
For most of its existence, Sims Lifecycle Services (SLS) has been viewed as a secondary business alongside its parent company’s metals operations. That perception shifted somewhat with Sims’ latest half-year results, which pushed SLS to the foreground as a core growth engine and a bellwether for where the ITAD and secondary components markets are heading.
Advisory: AI Capex Will Flood Servers and Tighten Laptop Supply: What ITAD CEOs Must Do in 2026
The latest forecast pegs 2026 IT spending at $6.15 trillion and quietly rewires the economics of end‑of‑life hardware. This analysis breaks down how AI‑driven data center capex, a slowing PC refresh cycle, and rising memory costs will reshape server resale, intake...
Apple’s Two‑Track Trade‑In Strategy: Macs Up, Mobile Down, and the ITAD Impact
On January 15, 2026, Apple quietly raised the stakes on used Macs while trimming mobile payouts, sending a clear price signal into the secondary market. This briefing unpacks what that split means for buyback grids, sourcing strategy, and where the best margin will...
Client Brief: Iron Mountain Q4 2025 – Growth Analysis, Execution Risks, and Industry Benchmarks
Iron Mountain reported exceptional Q4 2025 results for its Asset Lifecycle Management business, with 70% total revenue growth, 56% organic growth, and guidance projecting $850 million in 2026 ALM revenue. The company added 90 Fortune 1000 customers year-over-year and...
The cyber-physical MRF: AI and robotics reshape e-waste recovery
The electronics recycling industry is entering a new phase of technological acceleration. Advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced chemistry, and digital tracking are transforming facilities from manual operations into more automated, data-driven...
Brief: How Return‑to‑Office Mandates Are Disrupting Hardware Lifecycles
Return-to-office mandates represent a delayed but material disruption to enterprise IT asset lifecycles. The shift is driven by workforce policy rather than technology change and is unfolding unevenly across sectors. New data shows that RTO pressure coincides with...
Meta-Corning deal signals IT hardware retirement wave
Meta’s new multi-year supply agreement with Corning is the latest indicator that the US data center build-out, especially around AI infrastructure, is still accelerating, and that the long-term disposition pipeline for high-end equipment is growing with it. The deal...
Malaysia clamps down on illegal e-waste imports amid probes
Malaysia’s growing role as a hub for global e‑scrap is colliding with corruption probes, large container seizures and regional backlash. The pressure is putting Southeast Asia’s informal import trade under its harshest spotlight since China’s 2018 “National Sword”...
Auditors warn EU may fall short on critical metals
EU auditors are warning that Europe is unlikely to secure enough critical raw materials by 2030, because import diversification is stalling, domestic mining is slow and costly, and recycling of key materials like rare earths is still negligible. In a new report they...
New Blancco workflow targets ITAD bottleneck
Blancco has introduced a new tool aimed at tightening one of the more persistent gaps in ITAD operations: the handoff between certified data erasure and operating system reinstallation. The product, called Blancco Asset Reimaging, integrates Windows OS reinstallation...
US-EU trade rift adds risk now for ITAD and e-scrap trade
The suspension of trade talks between the United States and the European Union in January has added a new layer of uncertainty to the electronics world. Nothing announced so far directly targets the sectors of IT asset disposition or electronics recycling, but the...