An industry caught in the crosshairs of geopolitics needs global emeritus leadership
The semiconductor industry is at the epicenter of great power politics. An ascendant China is on a quest for a unified global system with China as the leading power. The United States seeks to maintain its position as leader of the liberal democratic… Read More
Each year on the Sunday before the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference, Nikon holds their LithoVision event. This year I had the privilege of being invited to speak for the third consecutive year, unfortunately, the event had to be canceled due to concerns over the COVID-19 virus but by the time the event was canceled I had already… Read More
As we approach the end of 2019 I wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. This will be my last update for a few weeks as I will also take a little break over the holiday season.
Despite a lot of people winding down for the year, there was still lots of interesting news from last week with lots of data points pointing to an even
Automotive makers and their suppliers are jacking up the processing power being introduced to cars along with higher speed wireless external connections. These high speed systems promise to collect, process, interpret and transmit sensor data for the purpose of enabling advanced collision avoidance and, ultimately, automated
The global semiconductor market is headed for a double-digit decline for the year 2019 after a decline of 15.6% in first quarter 2019 from fourth quarter 2018. According to WSTS (World Semiconductor Trade Statistics) data, this was the largest quarter-to-quarter decline since a 16.3% decline in first quarter 2009, ten years … Read More
2020 capex likely down at least 20% vs 2019 DRAM & NAND price drops versus slowing capacity. Investors happy cause it could have been worse.
Micron reported $1.05 in Non-GAAP EPS beating street consensus of $0.79 by $0.26. While this looks like a big beat, we would remind investors that estimates for the quarter were about… Read More
It was the best of times (for stocks)
It was the worst of times (for memory chips)
The disconnect between stock & chip prices
The Venn Diagram of Stocks and Chips
Having been involved with semiconductor and tech stocks for a long time there has always been a loose correlation between the fortunes of the industry and the fortunes… Read More
Micron Buries the Hatchet with China
Micron has a very long history of counter cyclical investing, buying the assets of vanquished competitors when the memory industry is at the bottom of the cycle, such as it is right now.
Over the weekend, Micron announced that it had an agreement to acquire the assets of the now stalled Jinhua memory… Read More
In our recent note sent several days ago we suggested that the China conflict would come back to haunt the US chip industry. From a stock perspective we suggested taking short term gains from a recent bounce back off the table. Both ideas turned out true, but way faster than we had thought! Not only have investors figured out that the… Read More
Historically, the semiconductor and semiconductor equipment industry were inextricably linked due to the cyclical nature of the chip industry. An increase in semiconductor revenues was followed within a short period with an increase in equipment revenues, as semiconductor companies purchased equipment to make more chips… Read More
