Q2 results are mostly in. Who was the star of the show? Take a bow, UMC, which reported Q2 revenues double Q1. Generally the results trended up and to the right and, as they trickled in, the Philadelphia SOX wended its jerky way above 300. In mid-March it was 190.
Second prize goes to TSMC whose Q2 was 88% up on Q1.
Third prize to Marvell for a 47% jump
Best old-timer award goes to Intel, whose Q2 showed the biggest growth over Q1 for 20 years.
Prize for the biggest surprise goes to Xilinx, whose Q2 revenues were below Q1's. The reason was a glitch in supplies from a foundry. Guess who? UMC. Yes, the same UMC that doubled its revenues in Q2. Odd that UMC was doing so well for some customers, while slipping up with its oldest customer.
Highly Commended for Q1-on-Q2 growth are: NXP up 26%, Broadcom up 22%, ST up 20%, TI up 18% and Infineon up 13%.
It makes those dark days of Q408 and Q109 when the market fell 20% sequentially in back-to-back quarters, look an abnormal anomaly. Things seem to be back to normal, and hardly any CEO expects a dip in Q3.
It shows how quick is the decision-making in the semiconductor industry. As soon as trouble hits, it empties the supply pipeline. As soon as the upturn comes, the industry re-fills inventories.
That all happened in a couple of months or so over the turn of the year - before going back to business-as-usual.
Any thoughts on when this all comes to an abrupt end, and the companies say "oops"?
C'mon, Anon, look on the bright side
Guess the Q2 result even can be better than what we saw here but some companies tried to save the money for the rainy days - put the brake on Q2 and ship in Q3.
Michael, I very much hope you're right.
David,
Now that the Quarters results are all in, it would seem appropriate to vote for best and worst semiconductor industry decisions for the Quarter / year awards.
The decisions made during the recent down-turn are all starting to show up on the bottom line. As a previous boos liked to say, business strategy is translating in financial reality. so lets cast our votes....
That's a very good idea, Robert. Any suggestions out there on who's had a good down-turn and who's had a bad one? One suggestion I'd make is that NXP and Freescale have had good down-turns as they've used all the fear about them them defaulting on their debt to buy some of it back cheaply.
Best down-turn performance / strategy has to be Mediatek
(just incredible they went from 5% to 20% market share in cell phone chip sets in the space of about 1 year), 4th to first in one year. Sure they capitalized on TI's, Moto's and NXP's missteps, but hey, that's what semiconductor strategy is all about.
I know it's not IC related but Apple Iphone was also an incredible execution especially for a down-turn.
Worst strategy / execution:
I find it hard to look past AMD and LSI (what are they doing?) although others sure did their best to keep the competition for last place interesting.
Thanks Robert, that's interesting MediaTak also went from No.25 in the world semi rankings at the end of 2008, to No.17 at the end of Q209.