Analog appraised: Demand and inventories at top chip makers

April 2, 2012 — Coming up on earnings season, Sterne Agee analyzes top analog semiconductor companies and the analog sector as a whole. Demand is stable (industrial, automotive) to improving (computing) in key markets, and distributor inventories are low for analog semiconductors. Q2 2012 demand for analog devices is up 5%, though bigger picture demand is still limited.

Texas Instruments (TXN, TI) was conservative in Q1, due to quarter-to-quarter weakness in the wireless segment. The chip maker also is running 11 fabs at about 50% utilization, which could drag on the company’s performance. TXN has approximately 50-60% exposure to consumer and computing applications; industrial customers provide 15-16% of TXN revenues. While computing PC-tablet builds are picking up, overall demand visibility still limited, and overall lead times are short throughout the analog sector.

Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) will benefit from its high proportion of customers in the stable industrial (45% of revenues) and automotive segments (18%), as well as 19% of revenues from the flat communications sector. ADI’s distributor inventory exiting last quarter was the lowest since 2010.

Avago (AVGO) is coming into earnings season with wins in the iPhone 4S and the new iPad, both by Apple Inc., and other high-margin 4G LTE handsets. Wireless makes up about 45% of Avago’s revenues. Wired infrastructure into datacenters, at ~30% of revenues should also continue to be strong with enterprise spending. Industrial and automotive buyers make up another 20% of Avago’s demand.

NXP Semiconductors (NXPI) has the dual tailwinds of automotive (25% of revenues) and identification (18%) applications in the quarter, and these should continue.

Diodes Inc. (DIOD) gets about 70-80% of its revenues from the Asia-Pacific. While PC-consumer demand trends are improving, Sterne Agee believes overall visibility is limited, especially in China. Wage pressures could work against DIOD, with average wages expected to rise ~10-15% again in 2012. Despite improving demand, DIOD does not have the product mix to capitalize on margin-improvement opportunities.

Sterne Agee believes overall lead times in the industry continue to be short and pricing trends are still weak overall.

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