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Semis With Highest, Lowest Inventory Levels

by: William Trent posted on: June 05, 2007 | about stocks: ACTS / ADI / AMKR / ISIL / LSCC / MCRL / MSCC / SIRF / SMOD / WFR

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In the interest of digging deeper into the semiconductor oversupply issues, this post will begin a series of data gathering on important ratios for companies in the industry. Hopefully the process will provide insight toward the companies better (or worse) positioned to take advantage of the next upturn or weather the downturn.

Today I used Zacks Research Wizard to get the recent Cost of Goods Sold [COGS] and Inventory levels for semiconductor industry participants over the last several quarters. I made some modest limitations on the share volume and market cap, but still ended up with more than 50 names. I used trailing twelve month COGS and the average of the last five quarters (for a beginning, ending and average) of inventory to calculate Days Sales in Inventory.

The higher the inventory levels, the more likely the company will need to reduce prices, reduce production or take a write-off, all of which would reduce gross profit margin. This first pass looks merely at inventory levels and does not consider strategy or other factors. For example, a fabless company would likely own less inventory than a company that produces chips at its own facilities. In a later post I will consider the trends in inventory (although the historic data I provide below gives some of it away) to determine the companies for which inventory levels are higher than the historic norm for that particular company.

The five companies with the highest levels of inventory relative to their recent sales levels are: Microsemi (MSCC), Lattice (LSCC), Analog Devices (ADI), Micrel (MCRL) and Intersil (ISIL).

The five with the lowest levels of inventory relative to recent sales are: Amkor Tech (AMKR); Smart Modular (SMOD), Large Cap Watch List member MEMC Electronics (WFR); Actions (ACTS) and Sirf Technology (SIRF).

The complete list follows.

semi inventory days