Category Archives: semiconductor manufacturing

Intel (INTC) and next-generation semiconductor plants

March 26, 2014 By in Current Market Thoughts, Industry Analysis, semiconductor manufacturing, Stock ideas, Technology Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

We’re living in a time of immense structural change.  For investors, the internet-led waning of established brand names and bricks-and-mortar distribution networks and the loss in value of existing manufacturing plant and equipment as new factories spring up in developing countries are among the most important.

One exception to this trend has been in semiconductor production.  There the engineering knowhow required to run the factories is very high and the pace of change has been very swift.  In addition, the cost of building a new fab is prohibitive for most:  a current-generation plant costs about $3 billion.  If a firm wants to fill the plant exclusively with its own chips, that requires annual sales of $7 billion or so.  In other words, only INTC and Samsung are big enough and rich enough to afford their own plants and the technological edge that brings.  Everyone else has to use third-party contract foundries like TSMC.

INTC currently has maybe a two-year lead over other semiconductor manufacturers in process technology.  It can make smaller, faster, less power-hungry chips than anyone else.  To preserve this advantage, the company has been making preparations–including funding research by equipment manufacturer ASML–to be the first out of the blocks with plants running new “extreme ultraviolet” technology and processing much larger silicon wafers to boot.

What has come to light very recently, however, is that these new factories are going to be mega-expensive, at $10 billion apiece or more.  As things stand now, that makes building one of them a bet-the-company move for anybody, even an industry giant like INTC.

Where to from here?

It’s not 100% clear, to me anyway, but:

–extreme ultraviolet lithography is probably at least a half-decade away, not a 2017 event as previously thought.  This means R&D and capital spending will be spread over a much longer period of time.  All other things being equal, this will mean higher cash generation by INTC.

–absent a significant cost-reducing breakthrough in EUL, INTC will likely partner with at least one other party to fund a next-generation fab.  Partnering could either be with other chipmakers or with one or two large deep-pocketed users of chips.   …AAPL?  …MSFT?

–it’s conceivable that INTC will itself end up with a substantial foundry business manufacturing chips designed–at least in part–by third parties.  One might argue that this would be a come-down for the premiere manufacturer of proprietary microprocessors.  However, the best foundry, TSMC, trades at a substantial PE premium to INTC even though its technology is inferior.  So morphing into a foundry could easily add a quarter or a third to INTC’s stock price.

buying Microsoft (MSFT) !?!

March 19, 2014 By in Industry Analysis, Recent Market Action, semiconductor manufacturing, software, Stock ideas, Technology Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

Yes, that’s what I’m beginning to do.  I’ve bought a small amount and intend to add to it on weakness.

For me, this is an unusual step, since MSFT isn’t exactly what you’d call a growth stock.  Quite the opposite.  It’s a value idea.  I’ve been building to it for some time, though.  I few months ago I wrote that in a year like 2014, where I imagined (and still do) that a stock that’s up by 10% will be an outperformer, the bar is set pretty low.  And after thirteen years of decline vs. stocks in general, the news that the company had dysfunctional management and had gone ex growth had been pretty thoroughly worked into the stock price.  My son-in-law told me it’s the nicest thing he’s ever heard me say about MSFT.  (It was a big part of my portfolios all through the 1990s, however.)

I also privately scoffed at prominent value managers who loaded up on MSFT several years ago purely on the notion that the stock was cheap, ignoring the issue that change of control was well-nigh impossible.

What’s changed?   …or, better, what’s changed my mind?

As I mentioned above, the market situation is one thing.

The stock’s metrics haven’t moved much:  steady cash flow of $3+ a share, earnings of $2.75, a dividend yield of just under 3%.

There’s a chance earnings may improve over the next few years:

–the board of directors has put new top management in place.  A cadre of looks-good-in-a-suit-but-doesn’t-do-much lieutenants are disappearing, as well.  There’s no guarantee that the new guys are any better than the old.  On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine they’ll be worse.

–Apple’s failure to produce an adequate alternative to the Office suite has limited the inroads it can make into MSFT’s corporate market.

–Windows 8 (I just got a new touch-screen laptop) is pretty good–very iPad-ish.

–a new generation of Intel chips + the emergence of Samsung, Asus (my brand), Acer and Lenovo making high-quality products may well reenergize the US consumer market.  Much lighter weight, high-resolution screens, instant-on and touchscreens may counter some tablet momentum.

–with its consumer/small business products, MSFT has had a continuing (large) piracy problem.  The shift to the cloud will help police that.

–new management may do good things.  Even if not, the idea that the company is turning a new page will likely support the stock until we can make a better judgment.

why commodities companies overinvest, turning boom to bust

November 21, 2013 By in economics, Energy, Industry Analysis, Mining, semiconductor manufacturing, Strategy, Technology Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

This is a continuation of my post from yesterday.

It may be that, as Chris Hackett suggests in a comment to yesterday’s post, that everyone has his head in the sand, not only commodities company CEOs and boards.  Maybe it’s some deep-seated psychological need to have the good times continue, or maybe a denial of the finitude of man, or…  Yes, commodities companies aren’t the only ones who extrapolate chiefly from the recent past in forecasting the future.  Nevertheless, I can think of three reasons why commodities companies feel most comfortable reinvesting cyclical cash windfalls back into new capacity in their primary business–even though that action itself inevitably triggers a cyclical downturn.

1.. It may be the best they can do.

Looking back at yesterday’s post, I think I was a little unfair in saying that there firms never think of diversifying.  During the first oil crisis in the early 1970s, all the big oils did diversify.  Gulf Oil bought the Barnum and Bailey circus (great job, Gulf; no wonder you got taken over); Mobil bought Montgomery Ward and Container Corp of America (both disasters); Exxon started a venture capital arm, which produced nothing of note.

Peter Lynch, of Fidelity fame, called this kind of move “diworsification.”  Ugly word, but an accurate observation.  Look at HPQ or Microsoft as other serial diworsifiers.

Of course, this is not really the best a company can do, either.  The firm could pay a special dividend to shareholders, but this sensible action rarely occurs to CEOs.  Reinvesting in a business they has some expertise in always seems to be the safest bet.

2.  Holding on to cash may be personally risky to a CEO, for two reasons:

–a cash hoard may make the company a takeover target.  Great for shareholders, not so much for the ego of a person who’s a demi-god to employees, but just a broken down old guy (albeit a rich one) if he loses his position.

–a sensible strategy would be to amass cash with the intention of buying assets on the cheap from semi-bankrupt competitors a couple of years after the cycle turns.  Suppose the cycle lasts longer than the CEO expects, however.  His profits are less than competitors; his company’s stock underperforms.  Maybe he’s ousted before he can act and his successor reaps the glory of making canny acquisitions.

Arguably you have more job security by staying with the herd.

3.  I can believe that adding capacity at or near the top of the cycle can make a perverse kind of sense under three (or maybe four) conditions.  They are the assumptions that:

–all attempts to diversify into other businesses will end in disaster,

–the company’s industry is in secular expansion, so that new capacity will be very valuable in the next upcycle,

–the company will be the first to add significant capacity, and will therefore have a year or two of supernormal profits from the new plant.   That will ease the pain of the downturn and put the firm in a stronger market position in the next upturn.

–(the, maybe, fourth)  even if a firm can’t be alone as the first to add new capacity, it should expand anyway.  This extra industry capacity will at least foil rivals’ plans to cash in big with their expansions.  Yes, the downturn will come earlier than otherwise, but the present market structure will be preserved.  A bit Machiavellian, and maybe giving undue credit to guys who think buying the circus is a great idea.  But it’s possible.

My bottom line:  long-cycle commodities, epitomized by base metals mining, are a true boom and bust industry.  As such, they’re a value investor’s dream come true.  For the rest of us, if we want to play we have to be in the uncomfortable position of buying when the stocks are very beaten down and it seems all hope is lost.  If you’re not accustomed to thinking this way, picking the right point to buy will be very difficult.  In any event, that point is not today.

3Q13 earnings for Intel (INTC): the wait continues

October 16, 2013 By in earnings conference calls, Industry Analysis, semiconductor manufacturing, Stock ideas, Technology Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

I’m on the road today, so this will be brief.

Yesterday after the market close, INTC reported earnings for 3Q13.  EPS were $.58/share, considerably above the Wall Street consensus of $.53.  Initially, the stock was up by around 2% in the aftermarket on this news.  Then it reversed course and lost about 2%.  Symmetrical, but not wonderful.

As I see it, the news can be divided into two halves–current market conditions and INTC’s future viability as a chip firm.

The near-term bucket is looking good.

–The high speed and cloud server businesses continue to boom, and now make up at least half of INTC’s total server revenues.

–Regular old corporate servers are even starting to pick up.

–The middlemen and OEMs that INTC sells its PC chips to are slowly starting to build their inventories in response to a bottoming of the PC market in the US and the EU.  Stocks, however, still remain smaller than normal, so there’s more improvement to come.

–More tablets will be appearing over the coming weeks with INTC chips inside.

4Q13 eps, traditionally a big quarter for INTC on holiday sales, will be flattish with 3Q13, on revenues up only slightly, quarter-on-quarter.

The future. on the other hand, has once again been pushed out–this time for another year, until 2015.

INTC’s industry-leading 14 nanometer chips have been delayed by a manufacturing glitch for three months until January.  So their higher speed and lower power use won’t be available during this holiday season.  To my mind, this is not a big deal.  On the other hand, during the conference call that accompanied the earnings announcement, CEO Brian Krzanich said he doesn’t think INTC can make its manufacturing operations as flexible as they need to be to respond to customer needs for another year to eighteen months.

This contrasts with the comments of former CEO Paul Otellini, for whom full competitiveness with rival chipmaker ARM Holdings was always just a quarter or two around the corner.

In hindsight, Otellini had a habit of being too optimistic.  In contrast, Krzanich, as a new CEO, has no incentive to make promises he can’t keep.  His best course of action is to underpromise and overdeliver.

The bottom line, however, is that the turnaround holders like me are hoping for has once again been pushed out.  That’s why the stock is down in the pre-market this morning, though not by as much as it was last night.

I’m content to hold and collect the dividend.

Intel’s 2Q13–the waiting game continues

July 19, 2013 By in earnings conference calls, Industry Analysis, semiconductor manufacturing, Stock ideas, Technology Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

2Q13 earnings

Intel (INTC) reported 2Q13 earnings results after the close on Wednesday. Revenue came in at $12.8 billion, down 5.1% year on year.  Earnings per share were $.39, flat quarter on quarter but off by 28% from INTC’s performance in 1Q12.  The figures were in line with the company’s previous guidance.

The company also lowered guidance for the second half, saying that this normally seasonally stronger period, while up vs. the first six months, won’t show its usual revenues gain.  INTC now sees full-year revenues for 2013 as flat–or about 2% lower than its previous view.

How so?

The cloud continues its explosive growth.  The server business is fine.  But the PC market is weaker than INTC expected.  For the first time INTC sees PCs as being as soft as consultants Gartner and IDC do.

During the quarter, INTC bought back 23 million shares of stock, paying an average of $23.91 each for them.

INTC shares were down almost 4% yesterday on the news.

the near-term investment case hasn’t changed much…

The big question is still whether the newest generating of INTC microprocessors, the first designed especially for mobile devices, will gain widespread acceptance.  A sub-plot, or maybe a necessary condition for this to happen, is the question of whether manufacturers of computer devices and operating systems are going to be able to deliver new “wow factor” products that people want to buy.

 

I’m content to hold INTC shares to see what happens, even though the tone of INTC’s comments suggests to me that we won’t see the new chips in full flower until early 2014.

..but INTC may be remaking itself in a more fundamental way

Yes, what I’m about to write may be making mountains out of molehills–but that’s what analysts do.

It looks to me that new CEO Brian Krzanich believes INTC is not in one, but rather in two, separate but complementary businesses.  One is researching and designing proprietary computer chips.  The other is manufacturing chips, either for itself or for others.

Although promoting foundry operations to equal status with making x86 chips is a simple and sensible change of viewpoint, it’s also potentially earthshaking for some INTC veterans.

I can imagine a lot of possible reasons (some of them mutually incompatible) for making this change of focus, but two consequences stand out to me.  Both derive from the fact that INTC is by far the most accomplished chip manufacturer in the world–one whose edge over the competition is increasing:

–to the extent that INTC picks and chooses the firms it makes chips for, it may be trying to turn the ARMH vs. INTC decision into an “eco-system” one.  A device maker can either have INTC parts + very fast, highly compatible chips from its partners or ARMH + a hodge-podge of less well-made, not so compatible parts from others.  Presumably this tilts the playing field considerably in INTC’s favor.

–investors like foundries better than chipmakers.  Look at the PE multiple on TSMC vs. INTC.    TSMC is 10% higher–even without considering the quirkiness of TSMC’s financials.