Battery Burn

Just over a month ago, Samsung Electronics began recalling its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone following reports that the devices were overheating and there was a chance that their batteries could catch fire.  At first, Samsung was simply replacing the batteries in the devices, but then the supposedly safe replacement batteries also still overheated and, in some cases, caught fire. The danger is so great that American airlines have banned passengers from bring the devices onto planes, even in checked luggage.

Because of the danger and the subsequently botched recall effort, Samsung announced last week that it was discontinuing the device entirely. As Samsung’s most advanced smartphone – meant to be a direct competitor to the much more expensive Apple iPhone – the company’s shares plunged 8% on Tuesday, their biggest one-day decline in eight years. It seems to be dragging the semiconductor industry down it.

While the Note 7 wasn’t Samsung’s most popular device, with the Galaxy S outselling it by three-to-one, about 2.5 million Note 7’s are being recalled and essentially destroyed. There’s even talk that Samsung might entirely discontinue the Galaxy Note series all together, which means no Note 8 next year. So, regardless of whether the Note 7 was Samsung’s most popular device of not, that still raises the possibility that demand for phone components could drop sharply over the next year or so.

It’s so bad that even though Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE: TSM), a company we don’t cover but is a bellwether for the industry, has dropped despite reporting better than expected earnings last week. In addition, there’s speculation that Taiwan Semiconductor will be the sole manufacturer of the A11 processor in next year’s iPhone release and the sole manufacturer for the A12. That’s a huge win, but the stock is still down by better than 2%.

Since Taiwan Semiconductor can’t shake the dead weight of a decidedly dead device, it’s not much of a surprise that our own holdings Xilinix (NSDQ: XLNX) and Ambarella (NSDQ: AMGN) were down 5.5% and 10% last week, respectively. That was a much worse performance than the NASDAQ Composite and mostly a function of the broader decline in semiconductors. It’s important to keep in mind that neither company has much of anything to do with the Samsung debacle.

Xilinix mostly makes programmable systems on chips and 3D integrated circuits, which are mostly used for high-end applications like machine learning and artificial intelligence. They’re also commonly found in cloud applications and industrial scale, Internet of Things devices, but not smartphones. With its second quarter earnings slated to be released later this week, both the company and analysts predict that revenue will be essentially flat sequentially at $575 million and earnings per share of $0.58.

As my colleague Joe Duarte pointed out earlier this month, Ambarella’s semiconductors are mostly used in high definition video processing. Furthermore, its chips are mostly used in drones and security cameras after the company made the decision to walk away from the smartphone business a few years ago.

So while both companies may be getting thrown out with the battery, neither will be affected by the likely dip in smartphone chip demand.

We continue to rate Ambarella a “hold” for reasons unrelated to Samsung, while Xilinix remains a buy up to $53.

Stock Talk

David Miller

David Miller

Ambarella … I believe you meant stock symbol AMBA.

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