What Happened:
Shares of semiconductor testing company Teradyne (NASDAQ:TER) jumped 9.1% in the pre-market session after the company reported first quartrer results that blew past analysts' revenue and EPS expectations. Looking ahead, next quarter's revenue and EPS guidance were higher than Wall Street's estimates.
This quarter's strength was driven by the company's Semiconductor Test segment, which posted revenues of $412 million vs estimates of $377 million. Teradyne also saw better-than-expected demand in memory, networking, and computing solutions given the momentum in AI applications. It expects to see this tailwind throughout the first half of the year. For the back half of the year, Teradyne expects Robotics to contribute meaningfully to growth through new products, applications, and distribution channels.
Despite all the positives, we note the company's inventory levels materially increased while its operating margin shrunk. The inventory rise could be related to Teradyne stocking up ahead of demand, but it's tough to know for sure until the company hosts its earnings call. Overall, this quarter's results still seemed fairly positive, and shareholders should feel optimistic.
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What is the market telling us:
Teradyne's shares are quite volatile and over the last year have had 4 moves greater than 5%. In context of that, today's move is indicating the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The biggest move we wrote about over the last year was 3 months ago, when the stock dropped 10% on the news that the company reported fourth-quarter results, with revenue coming in below Wall Street's expectations. Also, the company's revenue and EPS guidance for next quarter both missed analysts' expectations by a large amount. Management explained this, saying, "Looking into the new year (2024), we expect low tester utilization will impact demand in the first half of the year." Though, demand is expected to pick up incrementally in the rest of the year. Overall, this was a mixed quarter for Teradyne, with guidance that was particularly bad.
Teradyne is up 2.3% since the beginning of the year, and at $107.31 per share it is trading close to its 52-week high of $117.23 from July 2023. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Teradyne's shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $2,227.
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