SEMTECH CORP (SMTC) Stock Analysis

Price updated 4 days ago · SEC data refreshed 3 months ago · Not investment advice

SEMTECH CORP

SMTC Technology Semiconductors📄 SEC filings ↗ CUSIP 816850101
Valuation N/A
▾ What's in the 40/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
Fundamental health (43%) 40/100 → +17.1
leverage 40/100
Smart money (short interest + insider buying) (31%) 45/100 → +14.1
Macro backdrop (VIX, curve, credit, fear/greed + week-over-week momentum) (26%) 35/100 → +9.0
early-warning: macro conditions deteriorating week-over-week
Total40/100

Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.

💵 Price $167.24 · 4 days ago 📄 Financials SEC EDGAR · refreshed 3 months ago

How to read SMTC (pre-profit growth)

This company is reinvesting instead of generating profit, so a standard DCF cannot price it. The useful question is whether the growth the market is paying for is achievable — and whether the company can fund itself until then.

Where to start — the sections that matter most for this stock
  1. 1 Reverse-DCF — the growth the price demands ↓
    It shows exactly how fast the business must grow to justify today's price. Compare that to what comparable companies have actually achieved.
  2. 2 Cash runway ↓
    Can it reach profitability before it has to raise money and dilute shareholders?
  3. 3 Interactive calculator ↓
    Set your own growth + margin assumptions and see what the business would be worth if you are right.
Or — what are you trying to decide?
A note on process: fear-driven decisions — including fear of missing out — tend to be the expensive ones. A stock up 10% a day for three days is excitement, not evidence. Whichever reader you are, the data below is there to be checked before anything is decided.
🚀
"It's surging — should I chase it?"
The momentum / FOMO trade. Before you chase, see whether the people who know it best are quietly selling into the rally.
🏷️
"Is it a cheap bargain?"
The deep-value trade. How far below assets and our value it trades — and whether it's cheap for a reason.
ⓘ Using the right valuation lens for this business type

Standard DCF doesn't fit SMTC well — but that's expected for this kind of business. The Rule of 40 (Pre-Profit Growth) Lens below uses the metrics actually used by analysts who value semiconductors. Reverse DCF + Football Field also work as cross-checks.

ⓘ Why does SMTC trade at $167.24?

SEMTECH CORP has 88.4 million shares outstanding. At $167.24 per share, the market values all outstanding SMTC equity at $14.8 billion. That's market capitalization, not enterprise value — enterprise value also accounts for debt and cash — and it matters here because SMTC carries substantial debt. The share price by itself tells you almost nothing — a company can pick any share price by splitting or issuing more shares. What matters is the total value (Market Cap?Market Cap — The total dollar value the market is assigning to the entire company.
Why it matters: This is the number that actually matters when comparing companies. Two companies with the same business but different share counts have the same market cap.
Reference: Mega cap >$200B · Large $10–200B · Mid $2–10B · Small $300M–2B · Micro <$300M
Full explanation →
) compared to what the business actually produces. This page values SMTC in Per Share?Per Share — A company-level figure divided by total shares — what one share represents.
Why it matters: Per-share metrics are the only way to fairly compare two companies with different share counts.
Full explanation →
economics — what each share represents of the underlying business. Play with the share-price calculator on the homepage →

Loading insider & short-seller data…
Checking filings for failure warnings…

Football field: where does the price sit?

Different valuation methods produce different fair-value ranges depending on assumptions. Plotting them together lets you see at a glance whether the current price is reasonable across approaches, or only one specific lens.

$30$67$103$140$177Current price $167.24EV / Sales (p25→p75)$32.29$162.98
The current price sits ABOVE the high end of every method. The market is paying a premium to all of these lenses — it expects materially better growth or margins than the models assume.

Industry multiples sourced from: industry: Semiconductors. See the Peer Basket section below for the peer comparison and its limited-comparables caveat.

How does SMTC stack up against its closest peers?

We take the 5 same-industry companies most similar to SMTC (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If SMTC is much more expensive on the same yardstick, that's a red flag — unless you have a specific reason it deserves a premium. For a leveraged business, EV/EBIT and FCF yield (both in the table) are usually more reliable than EV/Sales, because revenue multiples ignore differences in margins and debt.

▾ What's "EV / Sales" in plain English?

EV (Enterprise Value) = market cap + total debt − cash. It's "what you'd pay to buy the entire company outright" — you pay the market cap to shareholders and take over their debt, but you keep their cash. EV is fairer than market cap alone because it includes the debt the new owner inherits.

EV / Sales = EV ÷ annual revenue. So "2.5×" means investors pay $2.50 of enterprise value per $1 of yearly sales. Higher = market is paying more per dollar of sales (usually because they expect future growth or fat margins).

p25 / median / p75 are the 25th, 50th (middle), and 75th percentile of the peers' multiples. Half the peers fall between p25 and p75. The median (p50) is the typical peer — that's the benchmark we compare to.

What peers trade at (p25 / median / p75)

Bold middle number = median peer. Half the peers trade above it, half below. Computed over 5 same-industry peers; implausible multiples excluded.

Peer-implied value check
Not enough clean peer EV/Sales multiples to derive a reliable median (some were dropped as implausible/outliers). The EV/EBIT and FCF-yield rows above are the better read here; also lean on the DCF.

⚠️ Important caveat: peer multiples only work if the peers are genuinely comparable. Always check the peer list below — if the auto-picker grabbed micro-caps or unrelated businesses, the comparison is noise. A medical-device giant priced against tiny biotech startups won't produce a useful signal.

▾ View peer list (8)
Ticker Company Industry Mcap EV/Sales EV/GPEV/EBIT FCF Yield
VICR VICOR CORP Semiconductors $15.2B 37.3x 58.7x186.0x 0.7%
SITM SITIME Corp Semiconductors $18.7B 57.4x 107.1x 0.1%
VIAV VIAVI SOLUTIONS INC. Semiconductors $11.4B 10.5x 18.3x197.5x 1.2%
LSCC LATTICE SEMICONDUCTOR CORP Semiconductors $20.2B suspect 38.5x 56.5x1,794.1x 0.3%
NXT Nextpower Inc. Semiconductors $23.9B 6.7x 20.6x34.3x 1.6%
SANM SANMINA CORP Semiconductors ·fallback $13.9B 1.7x 19.5x39.3x 2.9%
RMBS RAMBUS INC Semiconductors ·fallback $15.7B 22.2x 27.9x60.4x 1.8%
TTMI TTM TECHNOLOGIES INC Semiconductors ·fallback $18.0B 6.5x 31.5x71.6x 1.9%

Quality & solvency checks

Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.

Altman Z-Score?Altman Z-Score — A bankruptcy-risk score combining 5 financial ratios into one number. Predictive of bankruptcy within 2 years.
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
Not available for this filer

The Z-score needs working capital, retained earnings, EBIT, sales and total assets from the latest balance sheet, and at least one of those isn't reported in machine-readable form here — common for foreign private issuers. We leave it blank rather than compute a distress verdict from an estimated input. It doesn't affect the reported figures in the financial tables below.

Piotroski F-Score?Piotroski F-Score — A 9-point quality checklist scoring profitability, leverage, and operating efficiency.
Why it matters: High score = fundamentals improving. Low score = deteriorating. Especially powerful for filtering cheap stocks: cheap + high F-score historically outperforms; cheap + low F-score is often a value trap.
Reference: 7–9 = strong · 4–6 = mediocre · 0–3 = weak
Full explanation →
7 / 9
Strong
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
  • Positive net income
    Net income -$40.4M in FY2026.
    Why this matters: Does the company actually earn a profit? Sustained losses eventually force it to raise money — diluting you — or take on debt.
  • Positive operating cash flow
    Operating cash flow $181.2M (was $58.0M the prior year).
  • Cash flow backs up reported profit
    Operating cash flow $181.2M vs net income -$40.4M.
  • Return on assets improving
    Return on assets -2.9% vs -11.4% a year ago.
  • Debt load (vs assets)
    Long-term debt is 34.8% of assets vs 35.6% a year ago ($491.2M of $1,410.3M assets).
  • Short-term liquidity (current ratio)
    Current ratio 2.37x vs 2.07x a year ago.
  • Share count (dilution)
    Share count rose 23.4% (71.6M → 88.4M year-over-year).
    Why this matters: Issuing lots of new shares splits the pie into more pieces, shrinking your slice. Stable or falling share count protects existing owners.
  • Pricing power (gross margin)
    Gross margin 51.6% vs 50.2% a year ago.
  • Sales per asset (asset turnover)
    Asset turnover 0.74x vs 0.64x a year ago.

Missing data is never counted as a pass or a fail — it's shown as n/a and excluded from the denominator. Each check compares the company against its own prior year.

What if you assume different inputs?

Here's where we land — and what happens if you change the assumptions. Drag the sliders to set your own Discount Rate?Discount Rate — The annual return you demand for taking single-stock risk instead of buying a safe Treasury or index fund.
Why it matters: Higher discount rate = stricter valuation (a stock has to produce more cash to be worth holding). Lower = more generous.
Reference: 8–12% is standard · 9–10% matches S&P 500 historical return · Below 7% is illogical for single-stock risk
Full explanation →
(the annual return you demand for single-stock risk) and terminal growth; the value updates live so you can see whether the stock looks cheaper or richer. The discount rate starts at 10.0%, the figure our model used for SMTC. Open Advanced to also change beta, growth and the rate path.

Note: no headline intrinsic value is published for this stock (the valuation is held for a data-quality reason — see the notes above). The calculator below is a what-if tool: the values it produces are your assumptions played out, not our estimate.

4.5% (risk-free)9-10% normal18% (deep-risk)
0%2-3% (GDP)5% (rarely sustainable)

A full intrinsic value isn't shown for SMTC because the valuation is currently held for a data-quality reason (see the guardrail notes above). The reverse-DCF reading still works — it needs only the price and cash flow — but we won't publish a forward value until the underlying data passes our checks.

For comparison — the revenue growth today's price already assumes

⚙ Advanced — tinker with every input (beta, growth, rate path, margin → full intrinsic value)
Where the discount rate comes from — discount rate = risk-free + beta × equity-risk-premium
What you'd earn risk-free from government bonds — the floor under every other rate. Slide it down to model the market expecting rate cuts (value rises); up for higher-for-longer.
The extra yearly return investors demand for owning stocks instead of safe bonds — the price of risk. History runs ~4.5–6.5%; we default to 5.5% (slightly conservative). It's an estimate, not a law — lower it if you think equities are less risky than that.
Inflation reduces the purchasing power of a nominal return: a 9% gain at 3% inflation is about 6% in real terms. The intrinsic value above is already in today's dollars (a nominal DCF carries inflation in both the growth and the discount rate), so this switch does not change the value — it restates the return in real terms.
Higher beta → higher discount rate (sets the rate above). 1.0 = moves with the market.
What you think SMTC can grow revenue for ~5 years, then fades to terminal.
For a pre-profit company: the % of revenue that eventually becomes free cash flow once mature. (Our published value uses the sector norm.)
All inputs start at the values our model used.

    Copy shareable link to this scenario →

    Price$167.24
    Model IVNot applicable — DCF couldn't price this stock. The other valuation lenses on this page (reverse-DCF, peers, sector lens — whichever apply to this filer) carry the read instead.

    SMTC trades at a significant discount of 76.8% to the model's intrinsic value?Intrinsic Value — Our DCF model's estimate of what each share is mathematically worth based on projected cash flows.
    Why it matters: Compare to current price. Below IV = potentially undervalued. Above IV = priced for growth that must actually happen.
    Reference: Model-derived; quality depends on data and assumptions.
    Full explanation →
    . The market is likely discounting the stock due to its compressing gross margins, negative net income in the latest year, and rising long-term debt. The primary quantifiable risk is the implied decline rate of 20.0% compared to the model's 10.0%.

    ⚠️ Stock-based compensation equals 34% of pre-SBC free cash flow; FCF used here is net of SBC (a real shareholder-dilution cost), so it is lower than the headline GAAP cash-flow figure.

    As of 3 months ago

    Anatomy of a share

    What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.

    SMTC SEMTECH CORP stock anatomy showing per-share revenue, operating expenses, free cash flow, and debt
    −3.8%
    loss
    Where each $1 of revenue goes
    For every $1 of revenue, SMTC currently loses 3.8¢ — costs exceed sales. A money-losing business can still be a good investment if losses are shrinking toward profitability; check the trend, not just the snapshot.
    Net margin = net income ÷ revenue (most recent fiscal year).
    Plain English: each share (at $167) represents $11.88 of revenue per share per year, $0.46 lost per share per year, and $1.29 of free cash flow per share from the latest fiscal year. Each share carries $5.56 of total debt (interest-bearing borrowings, current + long-term).
    What's free cash flow / what do these mean?

    Revenue per share — how much the business earns from customers, divided by the number of shares outstanding. Top of the income statement.

    Earnings per share — profit left after operating costs, interest, and taxes, per share. Two versions appear on this page and are not interchangeable: GAAP diluted EPS uses the company's weighted-average diluted share count during the reporting period (this is the "earnings" in "price-to-earnings"); net income per current share divides annual net income by today's share count. They differ whenever the share count has changed.

    Owner-earnings free cash flow per share — the cash the business produces for shareholders. Savng's owner-earnings FCF subtracts capital expenditures and stock-based compensation from operating cash flow (SBC is a real dilution cost even though it's non-cash). This is deliberately more conservative than "standard" FCF, which subtracts only capital expenditures — so our figure is lower than the headline FCF you'll see elsewhere. FCF funds dividends, buybacks, debt repayment, and acquisitions; a company can report positive earnings yet negative FCF.

    Debt per share — total interest-bearing borrowings divided by shares. High debt-per-share next to thin FCF-per-share is a fragility signal.

    What you actually need to decide

    Every stock price is a disagreement. Here's the single thing that must go right for the bulls, the single thing that breaks the thesis, and the concrete signposts to watch so you can update your view as real results arrive.

    🐂 The Bull Case
    For the stock to work, gross margins must stabilize and ideally expand from the current 51.6%, and net income must consistently turn positive to support future growth and reduce reliance on debt.
    🐻 The Bear Case
    The biggest fundamental risk is the continued compression of gross margins and rising long-term debt, which could further erode profitability and financial flexibility if not addressed.
    📌 Signposts to watch — update your view as these print
    • Gross margin trend in the next earnings report
    • Changes in long-term debt levels
    • Return to consistent positive net income

    The trend, in plain numbers (FY2025 → FY2026, latest reported)

    Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.

    ✅ Improving
    • Revenue grew +15% to $1.05B.
    • Free cash flow turned positive at $113.7M.
    • Gross margin improved to 52% (+1 pts).
    • Still unprofitable at -$40.4M — loss narrowing.

    Nothing was clearly worsening year-over-year.

    Management & Leadership

    Semtech Corporation is currently led by CEO Paul H. Pickle, who assumed the role in 2018. The company is a long-standing player in the semiconductor industry.

    Paul H. Pickle
    Chief Executive Officer
    Emilie A. Prosser
    Chief Financial Officer

    What They Make

    Semtech designs, develops, manufactures, and markets analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products. Their products are used in various applications across industrial, communications, and consumer markets.

    End Markets

    IndustrialCommunicationsConsumer

    Revenue Drivers

    Analog and mixed-signal ICs
    Power management solutions
    Wireless and sensing products
    Market Cap: 14.8BBeta: 2.07

    Why Is It Priced Like This?

    Why Customers Pay

    High-performance analog solutions
    Low power consumption products
    Reliable connectivity solutions
    No discounted-cash-flow value for this filer We aren't publishing a discounted-cash-flow value here: the model's output failed our plausibility checks, so showing it would imply more precision than we have.

    What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value (P/B) — computed from the figures this company does report, shown in the sections below. Those numbers are unaffected by the missing cash-flow data.

    The market prices SMTC at a 76.8% discount to the model's valuation, likely reflecting concerns over its financial health. Specifically, the gross margin has been compressing from 62.2% to 51.6%, net income was negative in the latest year, and long-term debt has been rising significantly from $172M to $491M. These deteriorating health signals suggest the market is factoring in continued operational challenges.

    Business Model & Valuation

    How They Make Money

    Sales of semiconductor chips
    Licensing of intellectual property
    Providing design and application support

    The company funds itself through operating cash flow, which has been positive in 4 out of 5 years, but also through increasing long-term debt. Stock-based compensation equals 34% of pre-SBC?SBC (Stock-Based Compensation) — Paying employees with company shares instead of cash.
    Why it matters: It's a real cost — it dilutes your ownership — so we subtract it from free cash flow even though accounting rules add it back, which would otherwise flatter cash-heavy tech companies.
    Reference: Can be 10–30% of revenue at high-growth software firms.
    Full explanation →
    free cash flow?Free Cash Flow (FCF) — Operating cash flow minus capital spending: cash left after a company covers operating costs, taxes and interest and reinvests in the business — but BEFORE repaying debt principal or paying dividends. The cash actually available to investors.
    Why it matters: A company can show big profits on paper while burning through cash. FCF is what actually fills the bank account.
    Reference: Healthy mature businesses convert 8–15% of revenue into FCF · Growth companies often negative
    Full explanation →
    .

    Free Cash Flow DCF

    Standard FCF DCF: positive free cash flow in a sector suited for cash-flow-based valuation. FCF negative in 2/5 years.

    Show advanced inputs
    Revenue Growth9.1%
    Historical Fcf Growth-4.9%
    Sector Default12.0%
    Best Estimate10.0%
    Methodblend(70% revenue_cagr, 30% sector)
    Growth Basistotal

    What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project product, services and recurring/cloud lines independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.

    Maturity & Competitive Position

    Mature compounder

    Moat Signals

    Proprietary technology and patents
    Specialized product portfolio
    Established customer relationships

    Revenue has been growing at 9.1% per year over the last four years, from $741M to $1050M.

    Geography & Markets

    Semtech is a US-headquartered company with a global presence, serving customers across various international markets. Specific geographic revenue mix percentages are not available from the current data.

    Geographic Risks

    Global semiconductor market cyclicality
    Supply chain disruptions

    Market Signals

    These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.

    Model bullish, tape bullish - aligned.
    RSI?RSI — Relative Strength Index — a 0-100 momentum gauge. Above 70 = overbought; below 30 = oversold.
    Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
    Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
    Full explanation →
    (14)
    62.8NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
    MACD?MACD — Moving Average Convergence Divergence — compares a fast and a slow price trend to gauge momentum direction.
    Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
    Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
    Full explanation →
    BullishLine above signalThe fast trend is above the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently upward.
    50-Day Average$108.25Price above (+54.5%)Price above its 50-day average = near-term uptrend.
    200-Day Average$81.35Price aboveThe 200-day line is the long-term trend divider — above it is generally considered a bull market for the stock.
    50 vs 200 CrossGolden50-day above 200-dayA "golden cross" — the medium trend has overtaken the long trend (often read as bullish).

    Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.

    Data Quality & Risk Flags (2 notes — click to expand/collapse)

    Guardrail Notes (2)
    • Stock-based compensation equals 34% of pre-SBC free cash flow; FCF used here is net of SBC (a real shareholder-dilution cost), so it is lower than the headline GAAP cash-flow figure.
    • Illiquidity discount 15% applied (small/micro-cap — harder to exit, demand a margin).

    Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)

    From SEMTECH CORP's SEC filings (EDGAR).

    Income (5yr)

    YearRevenueNet IncomeEPS
    20261.0B-40.4M$-0.46
    2025909.3M-161.9M$-2.26
    2024868.8M-1.1B$-17.03
    2023756.5M61.4M$0.96
    2022740.9M125.7M$1.92

    Cash Flow (5yr)

    YearOperating CFCapEx− SBC & adj.Free Cash Flow
    2026 181.2M 9.8M 57.7M 113.7M
    2025 58.0M 7.9M 68.0M -17.9M
    2024 -93.9M 29.2M 40.2M -163.3M
    2023 126.7M 28.3M 39.2M 59.1M
    2022 203.1M 26.2M 51.2M 125.8M

    How we define FCF: operating cash flow − capital expenditure − stock-based compensation (owner-earnings basis — SBC is a real cost to shareholders even though it's non-cash). Latest year: 181.2M − 9.8M − 57.7M (SBC & adj.) = 113.7M. This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses.

    Balance Sheet

    Total Assets1.4B
    Total Liabilities860.6M (derived)
    Equity549.7M
    Total Debt491.2M

    Similar companies worth a look

    Same sector and industry, similar fundamentals shape. Verify everything yourself — this list is computed mechanically and does not reflect our judgment about whether any of these are a good investment.

    PG
    Methodology by Pouyan Golshani, MD — founder of Gighz. Savng was built by a physician for busy professionals: every number on this page comes from SEC filings (EDGAR) and FINRA data through transparent, rules-based models — no analyst opinions, no hidden inputs. How we calculate every number →
    ⚠️ Not investment advice. Automated model outputs, last refreshed May 30, 2026 (the analysis-refresh date, not the latest filing period). All models have blind spots. Full disclaimer →
    🔔 Follow $SMTC — free insider alerts
    One email when an insider buys $SMTC on the open market with their own cash — or notably sells outside a scheduled plan. Routine and automated trades filtered out. Follow up to 3 stocks free; Portfolio Watch covers your whole list plus valuation & risk alerts. Double opt-in, unsubscribe anytime.