Friday, December 6, 2013

Seeking Alpha: FormFactor Hoping That SoCs Drive A New Leg Of Growth

Wafer probe card company FormFactor (FORM) has had a terrible time of it on a long-term basis. After trading in the $40's back in 2007/08, the shares have chopped steadily down into the single-digits as the company has gone from being a cash-generating double-digit margin company to one that has posted years of losses. This decline has been spurred in part by major fundamental shifts in the company's previously core memory markets and company-specific execution issues.

The view in the rearview mirror is decidedly ugly, but the real question is whether FormFactor has positioned itself for a better future. The 2012 acquisition of MicroProbe has positioned the company as a meaningful player in the faster-growing system-on-a-chip (SoC) market, but manufacturing issues in the third quarter draw attention back to years of execution and performance issues. This is definitely a high-risk situation, and I'm not sure FormFactor can or will build on what MicroProbe brought them, but expectations are at a point where I think aggressive investors may want to take a closer look.

Continue here:
FormFactor Hoping That SoCs Drive A New Leg Of Growth

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