Texas Instruments Inc. and SK Hynix Inc. offered a gloomy view of the chip market in their latest quarterly reports, dashing hopes of a quick rebound for the $550 billion industry.
Dallas-based TI, whose chips go into everything from home appliances to missiles, said Tuesday that revenue will top out at $4.8 billion this quarter -- at best -- short of the $4.93 billion analysts had projected. Hynix, meanwhile, said memory prices fell 20% over the last quarter and warned of “unprecedented deterioration in market conditions.” The Icheon-based company slashed its capital spending for next year by at least half.
The pair of earnings reports followed a rally for chip stocks in recent days. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index, a key benchmark, had climbed for seven straight sessions, gaining about 11% since the middle of the month. Investors have been trying to pinpoint when flagging demand for chips would begin to ease. Some welcomed Hynix’s action to stem oversupply and whittle down production of lower-margin products. Its shares rose as much as 2.1% in Seoul on Wednesday after slumping 29% on the year.
“The South Korean chipmaker’s dramatic capital expenditure cut is a bold statement demonstrating their determination to confront the escalated uncertainties,” said Hebe Chen, an analyst at IG Markets Ltd. The production cut “could boost the company’s margin if investors are willing to take a long-term view.”
TI rekindled fears that the slowdown is spreading, saying sluggish demand had affected chips for industrial equipment -- an area that had been seen as more immune to the slump. Its shares fell as much as 6% in late trading Tuesday. Microsoft Corp. added to concerns by posting its slowest growth in five years, with sales of its Windows software to PC makers falling shy of estimates.
The Biden administration’s effort to rein in China’s chipmaking power has also cast a cloud over the industry. Hynix warned that its DRAM production plant in Wuxi, near Shanghai, may be forced to close in an extreme scenario where US sanctions prevent it from importing the equipment it needs to sustain and expand production.
“SK Hynix diagnosed that the semiconductor memory industry is facing an unprecedented deterioration in market conditions,” the South Korean company said in its report. “Shipments of PCs and smartphone manufacturers, which are major buyers of memory chips, have decreased.”
Fellow memory maker Kioxia Holdings Corp., which is cutting output by 30%, also said the market is in a severe condition and there’s little certainty of when sentiment will improve. Demand for NAND memory is weakening across the board, the Japanese firm said in a news conference at its Yokkaichi factory Wednesday.
“The memory market condition is severe, and how long and how deep the current adjustment period would be is what everyone wants to know,” President Nobuo Hayasaka said. “Demand from PCs, smartphones and data centers is falling and I can’t foresee when this will start recovering.”
Texas Instruments said it wasn’t surprised by a slowdown in demand for personal devices, but the industrial-equipment market was weaker than expected. Overall, orders have worsened and cancellations have increased during the current quarter, the chipmaker said.
Chip peers such as Samsung Electronics Co., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Intel Corp. and Nvidia Corp. have all sounded the alarm about slumping demand. Samsung reported its first profit drop since 2019 at the start of this month and will detail its full earnings Thursday.
But TI Chief Financial Officer Rafael Lizardi said it’s impossible to say whether the current slump is simply customers cutting back to reduce inventory or if there’s deeper economic concern at play.
Even when the economy is steady, “you still have semiconductor cycles,” he said. “Over the last two years I wouldn’t be surprised if customers have built too much inventory. Now we’re going the other way.”
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