Hi Mad,
For decades I've declared Cohu to be the hardest stock to hold onto.
It always frustrates the heck out of its holders.
That said it is a very conservatively run stock.
They have had to be, to live thru the many PC Cycles that have boomed and busted.
That being said, they have reinvented themselves many times.
Donahue has cast off non semiconductor businesses and has added all of the many types of test handlers. Some got passed up by better approaches but in general Cohu has always had a large cache of cash and at post peak times acquired a competitor,a dnright sized it and struggled through the trough period with some quarters large losses.
Each acquisition has brought diversity in offerings and a larger recurring business within the 35,000 installed owner base systems and a global footprint of services and parts. Ths business has attractive margins which enable the breakeven during most trough times.
Cohu has a market maker that has complete control on price.
Cohu's stock is 90% plus owned by institutions. At one time I had over 1% - long ago before secondary offerings were issued for the Xcerra (their largest acquisition:
List of Cohu's Acquisitions
Cohu has completed 6 acquisitions with an average acquisition amount of $288M. Its most active year was 2023, with 2 acquisitions, and it has averaged 1 acquisition per year over the past three years. These acquisitions are over 4 countries with most of them being in the Japan and United States.Most of Cohu's acquisitions are in Digital Twin (1) and Manufacturing Tech (1).
Here's the year on year acquisition history of Cohu:
2024202320182016Acquisitions Round Date (Yearly)0123
- Number of Total Acquisitions
Year
# Acquisitions
|
2024
|
1
|
2023
|
2
|
2018
|
1
|
2016
|
1
|
2012
|
1
|
To unlock all details and trends of Cohu's acquisitions. Sign up Today!
Recent acquisitions by CohuCohu's most recent acquisition - Tignis is a Provider of AI-powered process control solutions, founded in 2017 and located in Seattle. Cohu acquired it in December 2024.
Here is the list of all acquisitions by Cohu sorted by the latest acquisition date:
Acquired on
Acquired Company
Acquisition Price
Facilitators
Stake Acquired
Acquisition Multiple
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News related to Cohu's acquisitions Filter this list
Media has covered Cohu for a total of 26 events in the last 1 year, 3 of them have been about acquisition
List of Cohu's Acquisitions Filter this list
Cohu has completed 6 acquisitions with an average acquisition amount of $288M. Its most active year was 2023, with 2 acquisitions, and it has averaged 1 acquisition per year over the past three years. These acquisitions are over 4 countries with most of them being in the Japan and United States.Most of Cohu's acquisitions are in Digital Twin (1) and Manufacturing Tech (1).
Here's the year on year acquisition history of Cohu:
2024202320182016Acquisitions Round Date (Yearly)0123
- Number of Total Acquisitions
Year
# Acquisitions
|
2024
|
1
|
2023
|
2
|
2018
|
1
|
2016
|
1
|
2012
|
1
|
To unlock all details and trends of Cohu's acquisitions. Sign up Today!
Recent acquisitions by CohuCohu's most recent acquisition - Tignis is a Provider of AI-powered process control solutions, founded in 2017 and located in Seattle. Cohu acquired it in December 2024.
Here is the list of all acquisitions by Cohu sorted by the latest acquisition date:
Acquired on
Acquired Company
Acquisition Price
Facilitators
Stake Acquired
Acquisition Multiple
List of Cohu's Acquisitions Filter this list
Cohu has completed 6 acquisitions with an average acquisition amount of $288M. Its most active year was 2023, with 2 acquisitions, and it has averaged 1 acquisition per year over the past three years. These acquisitions are over 4 countries with most of them being in the Japan and United States.Most of Cohu's acquisitions are in Digital Twin (1) and Manufacturing Tech (1).
Here's the year on year acquisition history of Cohu:
2024202320182016Acquisitions Round Date (Yearly)0123
- Number of Total Acquisitions
Year
# Acquisitions
|
2024
|
1
|
2023
|
2
|
2018
|
1
|
2016
|
1
|
2012
|
1
|
Recent acquisitions by Cohu, most recent acquisition - Tignis is a Provider of AI-powered process control solutions, founded in 2017 and located in Seattle. Cohu acquired it in December 2024.
Here is the list of all acquisitions by Cohu sorted by the latest acquisition date:
Acquired on
Acquired Company
Acquisition Price
Facilitators
Stake Acquired
Acquisition Multiple
The Xcerra acquisition was Cohu buying a larger company than they were themselves. Donahue, Mueller and Jones have done an excellent job of consolidating and right sizing the company.
Since then, there has not really been a huge cycle of semi chip expansion that has really been explosive. Note Cohu does not participate in memory chip testing.
The chip business has had new entrants like graphic processors micro processors, mobile phone was the last really big cycle up.
Test handlers get bought when a new wave of chip making for an all new product really hits the world.
When that happens, Cohu gets its greatest impact at the very last 6 months of the production ramp buildout.
PCs, lap tops, and mobile phones offered up longer cycles.
Since 2018 auto's and EV's have offered good growth as so many more Dollars of chips are continuously being designed into them.
Auto's on the upper end offer a lot of safety bells and whistles. As older models get refreshed they often throw in the newer electronics like LED lights and ADAS systems:
Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) are technologies that assist drivers with the safe operation of a vehicle. Through a human-machine interface, ADAS increase car and road safety. ADAS use automated technology, such as sensors and cameras, to detect nearby obstacles or driver errors, and respond … See more
Terminology
Some groups advocate standardization of the name, such as Forward Collision Warning and Automatic Emergency Braking rather than Forward Collision Alert or Smart City Brake Support.
Such … See more
Adoption
In Europe, in Q2 2018, 3% of sold passenger cars had level 2 autonomy driving features. In Europe, in Q2 2019, 325,000 passenger cars are sold with level 2 autonomy driving features, that is 8% of all new cars sold.
According to a 2021 … See more
Ratings
Consumer Reports
In October 2023, Consumer Reports rated 17 "active driving assistance systems". Their criteria were:
• Capabilities … See more
Concept, history and development
ADAS were first being used in the 1970s with the adoption of the anti-lock braking system. Early ADAS include electronic stability control, anti-lock brakes, blind spot information systems, lane departure warning, adaptive cruise control, and traction control. … See more
Feature examples
This list is not a comprehensive list of all of the ADAS. Instead, it provides information on critical examples of ADAS that have progressed and become more commonly available … See more
Potential issues and concerns
Need for standardization
According to PACTS, lack of full standardization might make the system have difficulty being understandable by the driver who might believe that the car behaves like another car while it does not.
We can't help feeling … See more
Cohu has right sized it self and paid off all of the 350 million debt it took on when it bought Xcerra.
Cohu got the opportunity to buy Xcerra after a venture capital hegde fund in China was not allowed by the CFIUS court decision.
Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is an inter-agency committee in the United States government that reviews the national security implications of foreign investments in the U.S. economy. CFIUS, led by the U.S. Trea…
They now have the potential to reach 1 billion in revenue when "New Systems" come out of the trough.
Cohu will print money like you wouldnot believe when the CHIP ACT gets into the equipment ordering of new systems.
I believe that event will be the first time Cohu will show their profitability in test handling manufacturing AND couple with their ventures into test mking - which also has higher margins.
I've been in and out of ohu completely 2 times. My first shares were bought in 1978!
They were a debt free stock that pulled an 8 bagger in 1978!
A small chip maker named INTEL picked them to build heat chambers that simulated being in a hot computer. Their revenuw was under 100 million then.
So this is a sleeper of company. BUT when it gets a sweet spot in chip testing it explodes up in price.
I have been a very long time friend with Breeze and he has favored me with an EW read on Cohu.
His read is Cohu has gone from its high February 2021 @ 51.86 down in an X-Y- Z three wave (ending in September 2022) and up into an ABC X wave 43.99 in august of 23.
Cohu is currently in another XYZ wave down , and the good news is it is in the C wave of Z .
These XYZ X XYZ waves are long in duration and often end with a brutal retrace.
The combibation of a long down trend with a final shakeout is a very depressing wave combination.
Cohu is famour for deep retraces!
That being said there are some retrace fib numers to pay attention to and place your stink bids accordingly.
75.0% retrace @ 19.67
78.6% retrace @18.12
88.6% retrace @13.81
or a 100% retrace that goes all the way back to the March 1 2020 low of 8.89. Of which I will be on a loser and will gladly double down and make a million once again on Cohu.
I hope to round out my position with ADDINIG TO another 3,000 shares for an even 100,000 shares with a cost in the low teens.
Some day someone will notice that Cohu determines the cost of testing almost all chips made in the world.
In between my vision of the World tomorrow is one that has vastly more chips, all of which need to be tested. That leaves a place for Cohu to make sell and service Cohu's growing installed owner base.
Like KLAK when they merged with Tencor, Like Lam research when they merged with Novellus, Like AMAT when they merged with Varian, they all achieved scale to be cosistently profitable in trough cycles. Cohu seems to be there, they just have not had an up cycle to prove their profitability in an upward growth cycle where recurring sales gets dwarfed by new system sales.
When they do we'll have us astory stock to watch go parabolic.
That's my bet , I can't prove it but I'm sticking to it!
Hold with confidence!
Bob |
