Multi-patterning is an economic dead end. Huawei and SMIC appear to be in a position to mass manufacture leading-edge semiconductors but flooding the market with cheap semiconductors will require them to manufacture chips economically, which looks impossible given the techniques that they are using. The Financial Times (see here) has an exclusive with multiple sources claiming that SMIC is setting...
Foundation model is to AI what OS is to smartphone. While everyone is going to be focused on inference in 2024, the real action is going to be in the ecosystem where new players and old will slug it out to ensure that users and developers use their models as opposed to anyone else’s. The players are all working to...
Meta pushes the open-source button. Excellent results, more fat trimming, a dividend, and a share buyback hid higher losses from the Metaverse and more capex allowing a fire to be lit under the shares. Q4 2023 revenues / EPS were $40.1bn / $5.33 where profits beat by more than revenues against consensus of $39.1bn / $4.82. The key to the...
Apple remains toothless. Good results combined with further confirmation that Apple is in no position to restart its patent fight with Qualcomm, result in a company with good short and long-term prospects trading at a reasonable price. FQ1 24 revenues / Adj-EPS were $9.9bn / $2.75 ahead of estimates at $9.5bn / $2.37 which combined with a steady outlook confirms...
Google fails to blow its own trumpet. Alphabet reported good results but one tiny miss combined with vague and non-specific answers to easy questions on the conference call gave the market an excuse to take profits on what has been a great run. Q4 revenues-exTAC / EPS of $72.3bn / $1.64 were better than forecasts of $71.0bn / $1.59 but...
Nvidia can sleep well for now. Competing with Nvidia is currently focused on building better chips but this is ignoring Nvidia’s two key differentiators which mean that for now, no one is going to lay a glove on Nvidia. There is almost unlimited capital for investing in AI startups at the moment and outside of large language models (LLMs), the...
A very American dispute. The issue of AM radio in vehicles sold in the USA has been debated for many years, but electrical vehicles (EVs)bring this issue to a head meaning that the most likely outcome is that AM radio becomes an option rather than standard in electrical vehicles. Although the relevance of radio broadcasting has declined substantially in most...
A series of unfortunate events. Intel reported good results but guided badly as inventory corrections and market dynamics in several of Intel’s segments added together caused weak guidance which triggered a correction in what has otherwise been a terrific run. Q4 2023 revenues / EPS were $15.41bn / $0.54 ahead of estimates of $15.16bn / $0.54 but things really fell...
There is a little activity behind the curtain. It would be foolish to think that Apple is not trying to do something about AI but I suspect that it has done very little to date and it remains very far behind in a race that is not going to be quite as consequential as the cool-aid drinkers would have us...
Richard is founder, owner of research company, Radio Free Mobile. He has 16 years of experience working in sell side equity research. During his 11 year tenure at Nomura Securities, he focused on the equity coverage of the Global Technology sector.
Arm FQ3 24 – AI Pixie Dust
Arm silences the critics of last quarter Arm topped off a good set of earnings that silenced its critics and added a sprinkle of AI pixie dust that gave the market confidence that the AI story is real driving the shares up 19% in after-hours trading. FQ3 revenues / Adj-EPS were $824m / $0.29 ahead of estimates of $762m /...