Rich Beyer, CEO of Freescale, forecasts a resumption of semiconductor market growth in Q2.
Asked about this in the earnings call following Freescale’s Q4 financial results statement, Beyer said, according to the SeekingAlpha transcript: “The reason we’re gaining confidence that Q2 will be the resumption of growth is that in the October timeframe, we still were experiencing deterioration in backlog. That flattened in November for us and began to grow at the beginning of December. That has continued for us in the month of January. So we now have seen improvement in demand now for seven or eight weeks.”
Beyer added: “We have also spoken to a pretty broad range of customers, including our distributors, who indicate that they also feel that their demand while not storming is improving, and so we are at a position today where the view into Q2 is very solid. It is not predicate – the growth in Q2 is not predicated on any major change in any kind of programs like the roll-out of more of the base stations in China. We expect some improvement in things like that, but it is not predicated on any single thing happening that has high risk that might be delayed.”
Earlier this week T.J Rodger, CEO of Cypress Semiconductor predicted a strong second half, and TI CEO Rich Templeton called Q4 as the bottom of this downturn.
Last week, at IFS2012, Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizon stated: "I believe what you’re going to see is a weak first half, particularly Q1, and then a bounce-back that could be 1% worst case and as much as 20% best case, if the economy bounces back the same way as it did after Lehman then it could be 20%.”
