Texas Instruments, Xilinx earnings boost chip stocks

Jason Janik | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Robert Neely prepares to load a silicon wafer machine in a clean room at the Texas Instruments semiconductor fabrication plant in Dallas, Texas, U.S., on Tuesday, June 16, 2009. Texas Instruments Inc., the second-largest U.S. semiconductor maker, reported sales and profit that beat analysts’ estimates on stronger demand for chips used in mobile phones and communications networks in China. (Photo by Jason Janik/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Chip stocks surged Thursday after four companies beat analyst expectations on earnings. Of the 30 chip stocks on the PHLX Semiconductor Index, only Qualcomm was trading in the negative.

Xilinx, Teradyne and Lam Research all reported earnings and revenue that beat investors’ expectations in their reports Wednesday. The three stocks led the index on Thursday, with Xilinx, which makes programmable chips for data centers, up as much as 18 percent, and Teradyne and Lam Research, which make equipment that manufactures semiconductors, each up as much as 15 percent. Calculator manufacturer Texas Instruments also beat on earnings Wednesday and rose as much as 7 percent the next day, despite missing on revenue.

The index overall was up nearly 6 percent Thursday compared to a less than half a percent pop in the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index. As of Thursday afternoon, it was the seventh-best day for the index in the past ten years.

Xilinx, which creates chip technology for a variety of industries including communications and aerospace, said it has benefited from the global push toward next-generation mobile networks. On the earnings call Wednesday, Xilinx CEO Victor Peng said that within wireless, “the strong growth was primarily driven by 5G deployments in South Korea and a very early start of the ramp of 5G deployments in China.”

For Lam, “strong earnings were driven by better-than-expected margins,” wrote Romit Shah, an analyst at Instinet, in a note after the report. Shah has a “buy” rating on the stock and said the company’s gross margin of 46.3 percent topped Instinet’s 46 percent estimate.

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