My Nokia 6190 can work for a week without recharge compared to my old Philips cell phone that only lasts for about 8 hours; The lithium ion battery has enough energy to support my Sony TRV900 DV camcorder for about 7 hours; And my new IBM notebook can run about 3-4 hours rather than the 1-2 hour for the older model. Why such a dramatic improvement in a short 2 years period of time?
The answers are not in the newer batteries (although they did improve). Instead, the trick is the digital power management ICs that reside in every mobile device ? cell phones, digital camera and camcorder, and palm PDA and notebook computers.
Who make the power management ICs? An obscure company Siliconix (SILI) is the hero behind scene.
Based on Yahoo?s profile data, SILI?s 1999 revenue is $383 million (ttm) with a PE 50 (ttm) and price/sales (ttm) ration 8.7. The gross margin for the fourth quarter of 1999 was 45%, compared to 35% for the fourth quarter of 1998 and 42% for the third quarter of 1999.
According to Dr. King Owyang, Siliconix President and CEO, "Our PowerMOS business was up in all geographic areas in 1999 over 1998, and the outlook for 2000 remains strong. We expect the high demand for our products to continue in 2000, supporting further increases in revenues over 1999, assuming no unforeseen circumstances. With continuing high demand, our capacity is stretched for both front-end and back-end manufacturing. However, we believe that we have adequate programs to increase capacity to effectively address these issues during the year."
Dr. Owyang continued, "We continue to focus on our target application areas in the telecommunication, portable computer and automotive segments. The telecommunications market, in particular, has grown from 39% of our business in 1998 to 58% of our business in 1999. We introduced 67 new MOSFETs in 1999, a record number. In the fourth quarter, we introduced a new family of power MOSFETs in an SC-70 package, offering a 30% footprint reduction compared to the SOT-23 package, for power management functions in applications that are space-constrained, such as cellular telephones.
SILI current price is 106 -- a setback from its high of 165. Currently there is no analyst coverage on the stock, which may make SILI a hidden jewel. |
