SWKS - May 2015 Portfolio Review

SWKS - May 2015 Portfolio Review

At year-end, I reviewed each of my stocks, and talked about what happened with the stock since I bought it. Now that we are in May, I thought I’d bring as many of them as I have the energy for up to date. I’ll start with Skyworks.

Skyworks is my biggest position at 16.1% of my portfolio, but at first I didn’t think of it as an almost-forever, high-conviction, stock like BOFI. It’s a semiconductor chip company, so I felt that, almost by definition, it could fall out of favor, get commoditized, have its margins squeezed, and all the rest. But as it has continued to increase margins, instead of seeing them fall, and shows no signs that other companies can successfully compete with it, I am gradually revising that assessment. I had trimmed it back some to keep it from getting over 16%, but I changed my mind and bought back most of what I had trimmed, and I’ll let it grow for the time being.

I didn’t buy such a large position, but it has grown into its position size. I took my first position when it was recommended by one of the MF paid services, back in August of 2014 (nine months ago). I took the majority of my position at $52, added about $57, then it fell back to $46 when some other semiconductor company announced bad earnings. SWKS responded to this by pre-announcing increased estimates, and the price has gone straight up from there, now at $98.30. My initial position is up 89% in nine months.

This is a company in the Internet of Things world, and its growth has incredibly accelerated recently. Here’s what their revenues have looked like since mid-2012.

2012: xxx xxx 421 454
2013: 425 436 477 505
2014: 481 587 718 806
2015: 762

As you can see, at first revenue was going up $50 million a quarter, year-over-year, but during the last four quarters that accelerated to $150 million, then $240 million, then $300 million and $280 million! Last quarter’s revenues were up 58% yoy! That’s revenue! Up 58% organically! That’s something that’s truly rare to see in your lifetime in the stock market, which helps to explain why I haven’t sold any.

Adjusted earnings over the same quarters have been

2012: ----- ---- 054 055
2013: 048 054 064 067
2014: 062 083 112 126
2015: 115

While earnings always grew year over year, you see the same kind of remarkable YoY acceleration in the past four quarters here too. It’s rather astounding!

Here are trailing earnings from June of 2013 to Sept 2014:

2.10
2.21
2.33
2.47
2.76
3.24
3.84
4.36

Thus the current trailing earnings of $4.36 are up 76.5% from $2.47 a year ago. The PE is $98.3 divided by $4.36 = 22.55, which is incredibly low for a stock growing so fast. The 1YPEG is 0.29, which is even more incredibly low, and signals a stock in extreme buying territory.

So what keeps the price so low? It’s price anchoring! People look back at the price and say: “The price was $47 a year ago. It’s up 108% in a year. It must be over priced! Bound to fall! Momentum stock!”

But earnings are up 77% from a year ago, revenues are up 58%, and the company is growing much faster than it was a year ago. It’s also a much stronger and proven company. I added some last week.

In the Dec Conference Call They were almost euphoric about how things are going. I think this captures it:

In general these analog architectures are getting much more complex and that’s across our entire customer base in mobile and non mobile. But in terms of our largest customers this provides a tailwind for us. We have consistently more addressable content with each successive design. And in fact we continue to look out two to three years as we become more of a system producer or engaging very early in architectural selection. So we have very good visibility in terms of how the architectures are going. And so I guess I would say our clearly stated goal for a long time has been to gain content with each model, and as an incumbent we have been very successful in maintaining, and in fact growing our footprint, and that’s aided of course by complexity that all of our customers need help in solving, particularly on the analog side and that’s our strength.

What that says to me is that once they get in with a customer, they are in for life, because they become an integral part of a very complex system, and replacing them by a competitor who is marginally cheaper would be very expensive and questionable. They saw margins gradually rising instead of falling.

Here are some remarks from the last conference call:

Turning to our June quarter, we expect revenue to be $800 million, up 36% year-over-year. At this revenue level, we anticipate gross margin to be 48%, representing a sequential increase from 46.7%, and that’s driven by a combination of growing adoption of our products, increasing global scale, and enhanced vertical integration and our ongoing operational initiatives. These factors have created new baseline for our business model, providing a path to continued margin improvement ahead. And all of this puts us on a firm path towards our target of at least 50% gross margin for the company.

This is crucial!!! The doom and bloomers say, “This is a chip company. Their fate is to be commoditized and have their margins squeezed to nothing.” Margin expansion means that that is clearly not happening!

Across the board, we see more content opportunities in each successive generation of device and integrated solutions displacing conventional discrete components. As this happens, a host of component providers, who lack our technology brand, our integration capabilities and system expertise, are simply unable to keep pace.

They announced a $300 million stock buyback (They have $800 million in cash that they can use). They are also paying a small dividend. They are making so much money they don’t know what to do with themselves.

To sum up, I’m holding this one for a long ride, but I will keep a close watch on it.

Saul

For FAQ’s and Knowledgebase
please go to Post #7972

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Saul,

We are very much aligned in our thinking on this one. The one thing that I would add is that the end markets for their products (and design services) should continue to grow very quickly for the next several years. If I recall correctly, mobile devices account for about 47% of their sales. The world will shift to 4G LTE; China is in the middle of this process and there is talk of India next. The world’s use of download data to mobile devices will continue to grow every year with everyone on mobile watching video and using more and more data rich applications. SWKS said on the conference call that they have visibility with customers who are planing products several years in advance (5G, 6G???). With each successive generation of device the need for bandwidth will increase and the task of separating out unwanted signals and letting ever narrowing bandwidths through will get exponentially more complex. Yes, the number of companies that can design such systems is shrinking and the makers of devices have little choice but to outsource this task. Then there is the increasing number of non-mobile devices that will need to be connected to the internet of things…this market is growing very fast too. Past growth looks great, value looks incredible, and the future prospects are excellent as well.

Chris

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Thanks Chris for that addition. You understand that a lot better than I do.

Best,

Saul

Thanks Chris for that addition. You understand that a lot better than I do.

Thanks, Saul, but I’m not sure I really understand better than you. I am no technology expert and I have little understanding about the features and benefits of the majority of products that utilize SWKS components. My assessment of their future markets is based primarily based on my observations.

  1. SKWS has stated for at least the past to conference calls that they are working in collaboration with device manufacturers on designing products that are next generation or even several generations away from launch. This tells me that they have great visibility into their future business. It also tells me that they have a view into how complex these devices will be in the next several generations. Third, it gives be greater confidence into their assertion that their gross margins will continue to expand toward 55%. SWKS management’s assertions about their forward looking statements (margins, increasing market share, lack of competitors’ ability to compete, increasing complexity of each successive product generation, expansion of internet of things, etc) are not just predictions of what they think. They are actually seeing these things unfold in front of them because they are involved very early (sometimes several years) in product designs.

  2. The world is moving from PCs to mobile more and more. We see this every day when we see everyone on their phones. We see it when companies like Google, Facebook, and many others are focusing more and more on mobile advertising. They don’t do this for the fun of it; they do it because that’s where people are increasingly consuming the data.

  3. The time it takes a new technology to spread across the world gets shorter and shorter all the time. Fifty years ago many new technologies would never reach some places. Today, movies are released simultaneously globally in many cases. Just look at the iPhone launches. I think Apple initially launched new iPhones in the US only. Today, Apple’s initial launches occur in a large number of countries. Another example: China is rolling out 4G right now, a couple of years after the US. In the future, most countries may launch the next generations together. This will increase the market size for many companies. SWKS will be a big beneficiary of this.

  4. Mobile phones are being used more more and more data intensive functions. A big one is video. I think back when I was in college. I had no mobile phone. In the mid-90s, I finally got a phone but used it only to talk. In 2008, I got my first smart phone which I used for email and web browsing mainly. I’m on my third generation smart phone now and I use it for more and more things. It’s become essential. My original smart phone would not be able to handle the tasks that I want to do today. More and more people are using downloaded video and more and more companies are pushing video out to their customers. The preferred mode of viewing it is mobile because people are on the go and they want to see it. The consume more and more data. This means the devices must get faster and faster at downloading the information (because video is highly data intense). Thus, we need faster and faster networks and therefore SWKS products that enable these faster data flow rates.

  5. The world is being interconnected at an astonishing rate. Day to day people may not notice it but if you just look a few years back you will realized how fast things are changing and how the world is becoming more and more in sync at adopting technological change. SWKS products are a key enabler of this change.

So you see, without any special training in technology, one can observe what is happening around them and project how this will impact SWKS financially. When you look at a company, see the PE and 1YPEG is essential but making a determination about the future is also crucial to the success that you will have as an investor.

Chris

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Saul and Chris,

Can you comment on how you see the relationship between SYNA and SWKS in a portfolio? Are they competitors or just in a related space where they can coexist? I’m long 6% SWKS and 2% SYNA currently. With things so rosy for SWKS I have to wonder about SYNA.

Thanks much, -Chris O

Can you comment on how you see the relationship between SYNA and SWKS in a portfolio? Are they competitors or just in a related space where they can coexist? I’m long 6% SWKS and 2% SYNA currently. With things so rosy for SWKS I have to wonder about SYNA.

SYNA and SWKS are not competitors. They are both suppliers in mobile devices. SYNA is a human interface company. SWKS is a companies that enables devices to connect wirelessly.

I think SWKS is in a great competitive position in their market. I think that their future to grow is very certain.

I own SYNA. They have been doing great, but my confidence about their future is not nearly as strong as SWKS. They just reported a great quarter but their guidance disappointed. Despite guidance that was lower they still will show growth. SYNA must be watched very closely, IMO.

I have a 14.5% position in SWKS and a 4% position in SYNA. I would not reduce SWKS to add to SYNA. The reverse would be a better bet in my opinion.

Chris

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I am in semi space and I have to admit, I don’t try to invest in this space. Over the years, I have seen quite a few companies doing very well but for every one of them doing well, there are many more that gets struck in cyclality of the business and worse yet, become irrelevant due to fast moving pace of technology.

Given that, Saul’s ability to pick just one or two winning companies in this space at right time just baffles me. (I refer to SWKS, AMBA and SYNA.) I have benefited from Saul and others’ discussion on this board in stocks like BOFI, CELG and SKX… But I have consistently ignored discussions on SWKS, AMBA and SYNA because none of these have advantage of stickiness of software or tools (that say ARM, Intel, Xilinx and some other companies have in this space). So they are always one product cycle away from being designed out by a competitor. Clearly, these companies have taken sufficient lead in their core market that has kept competition at bay… Also each one of these are in growth markets that certainly helps.

Kudos to the gang on this board. You convince me to buy some SWKS. I will probably buy some AMBA and SYNA as well.

One other company to check out in this space is CAVM… it’s done extremely well and have all signs of becoming next Broadcom.

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Saul and Company,

I am just wondering with SWKS looking great, how come it was not picked up by RB or SA?

Johnny

  • just wondering -

I have a 14.5% position in SWKS and a 4% position in SYNA. I would not reduce SWKS to add to SYNA. The reverse would be a better bet in my opinion.

I have a 16.1% position in SWKS and a 4.2% position in SYNA. I would not reduce SWKS to add to SYNA. The reverse would be a better bet in my opinion.

I agree with all the rest too.

Saul

Saul,

thanks for this great write up on SWKS. I’ve been thinking of opening a position in either SWKS or SWIR, or both. Do you have any thoughts as to how the two compare? I’d be really interested to know why you are in SWKS and not SWIR, given that they both serve the “internet of things.”

Thanks, and thanks for all that you do on these boards, I am indebted to you.

Macculloch

thanks for this great write up on SWKS. I’ve been thinking of opening a position in either SWKS or SWIR, or both. Do you have any thoughts as to how the two compare? I’d be really interested to know why you are in SWKS and not SWIR, given that they both serve the “internet of things.”

Hi Macculough,

Well, just for starters, SWIR has an adjusted PE of 59 and negative GAAP earnings. SWKS has an adjusted PE of 22, and an incredible outlook. JMHO

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