Semi Execs Present Optimistic View At Morgan Stanley's TMT Conference

Morgan Stanley is hosting its annual Tech, Media & Telecom conference in San Francisco this week, and the firm's semiconductor analyst Joseph Moore has compiled a summary report on what investors need to know from the first day of the conference. Here’s an overview of what Moore had to say.

Intel Corporation INTC head of non-volatile memory solutions Rob Crooke discussed the company’s opportunities in memory solutions. “The company was clear that its ambitions are largely limited to markets that are adjacent to core Intel businesses, not broader-based memory, but said that they could continue to scale the business in line with customer needs,” Moore said.
NVIDIA Corporation NVDA CFO Colette Kress painted a bullish picture of the company’s opportunities in gaming, data center and the automotive industry. “It's an impressive group of growth drivers, though they are familiar talking points for investors focused on the name,” the analyst said.
IMPINJ Inc PI CEO Chris Diorio is excited about the potential for RFID adoption, but an inventory correction is weighing on the company in the near-term. “In terms of the current business environment, Impinj expects the inventory correction at its partners to last around two quarters, with business starting to recover in the second half of the year,” Moore said.
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD CEO Lisa Su said the company has an exciting long-term opportunity in its server business. “Dr. Su reiterated recent targets for server market share (mid-single digits by year-end, double digits four to five quarters later), highlighting several reasons for that upbeat view — solid performance of the first generation EPYC chip, positive indications about the ramp of the second generation product and desire for an alternative to Intel in the marketplace after several years of Intel dominance,” Moore said.
ON Semiconductor Corp ON management sees positive trends through the first half of 2018 but admitted there is limited visibility beyond that point. “After a successful integration of the Fairchild acquisition and having quickly delevered to 1.6X, ON has the capacity for additional M&A and is focused mostly in the automotive and industrial markets."
Quantenna Communications Inc QTNA management said 10G WiFi products have reached an inflection point and should deliver robust growth in 2018. “Recall that Quantenna, the leader in the service provider WiFi market, hit a snag in [the second half of 2017] around delayed deployments of its new technology, called ‘10G,’ with a large North American cable customer; that seems definitively behind us at this point, as that customer has started nationally advertising the high-end WiFi capability enabled by 10G,” Moore said.
Inphi Corporation IPHI reported a broad-based recovery in its business, as the company is on the precipice of multiple new product cycles. “The company said [they] have solid line of sight to the design wins and sockets that will lead to the recovery in the business and said that with 12-week lead times, customer order trends continue to point to the recovery that they described on the earnings call,” the analyst said.