Benchmark analyst David Williams maintained ON Semiconductor Inc (NASDAQ:ON) with a Buy and lowered the price target from $88 to $80.
While ON’s results were better than feared, with stabilization in the Auto market and moderate improvement in traditional Industrial, Williams noted that the outlook missed expectations on persistent inventory digestion and a tepid demand environment.
SiC remains the key momentum driver in the near term, with convincingly strong evidence of the firm’s ability to outperform the industry growth by 2x, per the analyst.
Although unit volume remains the wildcard, share gains across existing platforms scheduled for production this year support substantial SiC growth opportunities.
However, with the pace of EV adoption in question and the accelerating push toward more economical models, investors are more concerned with the potential erosion of SiC content than ON seems to be, he said.
While Williams recognized the SiC performance advantages extend to the lower-end platforms, the number of sockets is considerably reduced and will require meaningfully higher unit sales to offset the lower available content.
The near-term growth opportunity remains positive, but the analyst is increasingly cautious about the sustainability of the mid to longer-term growth trajectory on the global SiC capacity expansion coming ...