Semiconductor & Technology Specialist, Ingenuity

William Keating

Dr. William Keating is a highly experienced senior executive with over 25 years experience in the IT/Semiconductor Industry. The majority of Dr. Keating's career was spent at Intel Corporation where he held senior leadership positions in Europe, the US and Asia from 1992 through 2014. He served as Intel's IT Director for APAC, China & Japan from 2005 through 2014 when he was based in Hong Kong and was responsible for the IT systems (Infrastructure, Networks, Data Centres, ERP, Sales & Marketing systems, Business Intelligence etc. ) for all of Intel's offices & factories through the region. From 1998 through 2005, he was the founder & director of an internal IT Consulting Organisation (IT Flex Services), a 500-person team which remains a core part of the Intel IT Organisation to this day. Dr. Keating's first 6 years at Intel were spent in charge of the Factory Automation Systems (Robotics, Databases, Networks, Servers, Clients etc.) supporting Intel's then state-of-the-art 200mm factory network. Since leaving Intel in 2014, Dr Keating established his own Technology Research & Consulting Company (www.ingenuity.hk) where he focuses on the products, roadmaps & technologies of companies such as Intel, AMD, Samsung, Apple, Micron- as well as the key equipment suppliers to those companies e.g. ASML, AMAT, Canon, Nikon etc. Dr. Keating specializes in niche topics of high significance within the semiconductor industry. These include the future of Moore's Law and in particular the significance of Lithography in maintaining Moore's Law (EUV, SDA, NanoImprint), the role & growth of the GPU in specialised applications such as Deep Learning (Neural Networks) for Voice, Image & Pattern recognition at companies such as Facebook, Google & Baidu. He also holds regular discussions on the future of memory, in particular the rise of 3D NAND and the emergence of new memory technologies such as 3D Xpoint.

Semiconductor & Technology Specialist

Toshiba: King Street Assumptions Look Exceedingly Optimistic

Toshiba: King Street's Buyback Proposals Lack Required Detail

Semiconductor Memory DRAM Supply, Demand Pricing Review Q2 2018

Semiconductors. Is the Bubble About To Burst?

Micron. What The Market Is Missing, For Now.

Intel's Potential $720 Million Holiday Season Gift To AMD

Ingenuity

Our focus is exclusively on in-depth research & consulting in the broader semiconductor industry. We focus on the key players, namely Intel, Micron, Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, NVIDIA, AMD, TSMC & Global Foundries - as well as some of the lesser known, but nonetheless critical, companies such as ASML (for EUV), Mellanox, Cavium, Xilinx etc. We specialise in their products, roadmaps, process technologies, competitive advantages & threats etc. We also help our clients understand the implications of new and emerging technologies, e.g. 3D X-Point, 3D NAND, Carbon Nanotubes, Autonomous Driving, Graphene, Silicon Photonics, Wafer-Level Optics, Artificial Intelligence, FPGA, GPU, ASIC etc. 

Semiconductor Analysis & Research

Equity Bottom-Up

DRAMeXchange recently reported that they expect DRAM contract prices to fall 5% QoQ in Q4 2018, higher than their previous forecast of 1~3%. Most industry experts agree and indeed we recently predicted that DRAM prices would fall by 20% over the course of the next twelve months. It is of particular interest to investors to model <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/13382" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:13382:1">Micron</a> through this pending DRAM price correction. DRAM comprised 70% of the company's revenue in its latest Q4 FY 2018 quarter compared to 26% for NAND. At the same time, DRAM is far more profitable than NAND with margins, both gross and net, around 50% higher. Micron's financial performance during a price-down cycle is therefore heavily weighted by its DRAM profitability.We modeled multiple scenarios for the progression of Micron's DRAM business over the course of the next twelve months. In our most likely scenario, DRAM revenues drop roughly 7% in their next quarter, Q1 FY 2019, to $5.5 billion and remain close to those levels for the following three quarters. Gross margins in this scenario actually increase, reaching ~74% by Q4 FY 2019, driven upwards by the ongoing quarterly cost-down advantage while revenues remain flat.

DRAMeXchange recently reported that they expect DRAM contract prices to fall 5% QoQ in Q4 2018, higher than their previous forecast of 1~3%. Most industry experts agree and indeed we recently predicted that DRAM prices would fall by 20% over the course of the next twelve months. It is of particular interest to investors to model Micron through this pending DRAM price correction. DRAM comprised 70% of the company's revenue in its latest Q4 FY 2018 quarter compared to 26% for NAND. At the same time, DRAM is far more profitable than NAND with margins, both gross and net, around 50% higher. Micron's financial performance during a price-down cycle is therefore heavily weighted by its DRAM profitability.We modeled multiple scenarios for the progression of Micron's DRAM business over the course of the next twelve months. In our most likely scenario, DRAM revenues drop roughly 7% in their next quarter, Q1 FY 2019, to $5.5 billion and remain close to those levels for the following three quarters. Gross margins in this scenario actually increase, reaching ~74% by Q4 FY 2019, driven upwards by the ongoing quarterly cost-down advantage while revenues remain flat. 

Micron. Modeling DRAM Through The Lens Of A Looming Price Correction

Micron Technology

Micron. Modeling DRAM Through The Lens Of A Looming Price Correction