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

Korea Stock Market Monthly Recap #43 (December 2019) + Beckham Tries Hanwoo

Semiconductor Surge:  GEM Managers Hit Max Exposure

Micron. Lowering Expectations Ahead Of Earnings

Micron Q4 2019 Earnings & Outlook.Things May Be Worse Than They Appear.

Micron Expresses Hopes for Better Quarters Ahead

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

<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/micron-technology-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:13382:1" rel="noopener">Micron</a> marginally beat on revenue and net income but delivered a worse than expected forecast for the current quarter with revenues down ~8% sequentially. Micron attributed the decline to seasonality. In reality, two of their last three FYQ2 quarters were strongly up QoQ, casting some doubt on the veracity of this claim. Micron stated that this current quarter would be the trough of their down cycle from a financial perspective and that things would improve gradually through the remainder of the year. This was enough to soothe investor concerns and the share price registered a 2.8% gain to close at $54.53 the following day.While we remain strongly optimistic regarding Micron's future growth potential and concur that the current quarter will likely turn out to be the bottom, we remain concerned about headwinds which are unique to Micron in the coming quarters. Furthermore, while we may have reached the bottom of the current downcycle, there's no telling how long it will take for things to improve materially from here and the prospect of the first negative FCF quarters in three years looms large. Yes, things are getting better for Micron, but they're still not great.

Micron marginally beat on revenue and net income but delivered a worse than expected forecast for the current quarter with revenues down ~8% sequentially. Micron attributed the decline to seasonality. In reality, two of their last three FYQ2 quarters were strongly up QoQ, casting some doubt on the veracity of this claim. Micron stated that this current quarter would be the trough of their down cycle from a financial perspective and that things would improve gradually through the remainder of the year. This was enough to soothe investor concerns and the share price registered a 2.8% gain to close at $54.53 the following day.While we remain strongly optimistic regarding Micron's future growth potential and concur that the current quarter will likely turn out to be the bottom, we remain concerned about headwinds which are unique to Micron in the coming quarters. Furthermore, while we may have reached the bottom of the current downcycle, there's no telling how long it will take for things to improve materially from here and the prospect of the first negative FCF quarters in three years looms large. Yes, things are getting better for Micron, but they're still not great.  

Micron. Things Are Getting Better But They're Still Not Great.

Micron Technology

Micron. Things Are Getting Better But They're Still Not Great.