National Semiconductor’s CEO Don Macleod believes the power and analogue IC manufacturer has the production capacity to take advantage of an upturn in the market this year.
According to Macleod, the company’s wafer fabs are currently running at just 50-60% of capacity and he has no plans to trim that capacity any further.
The Arlington fab in Texas is due to close this quarter following an announcement early last year.
“We are in a very good position, the industry is picking up and we have lots of capacity,” said Macleod.
Macleod sees this level of under-utilisation of his fabs as a benefit and not a problem.
“Fab under-utilisation is a benefit to us because it means we can tune our business to the recovering economic outlook,” said Macleod.
“We can build a company twice the size it is today without building another fab,” said Macleod.
National is that rare thing in the semiconductor industry, a chip supplier which manufactures all is own ICs in its fabs in the US and Europe.
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National has cut its manufacturing capacity and around a 1,000 jobs during the last 12 months.
The closure of its fab in Arlington, Texas, leaves it with two wafer fabs at Maine in the US and Greenock in Scotland, along with an assembly and test facility in Melaka, Malaysia.
Macleod said the company is currently installing a new 8-inch wafer line in its fab at Greenock in Scotland.
“We’re hiring people and investing in the Greenock fab,” said Macleod during his first visit to Europe following his appointment to the CEO’s office last October.
All this production capacity means that National is not being forced, unlike some other suppliers, to increase product lead times as demand picks up.
“The capacity we have means that 80-85% of our products are on lead times of six weeks or better,” said Macleod.
National’s revenues in the last financial quarter, ending in November, were up 10%.
“The downturn is behind us and I see revenue growth coming back,” said Macleod.