If you are considering speculating on Soitec's share price online, we recommend that you take the time to read this article before you start trading so that you have all the knowledge you need to make your analysis. To help you in your analysis, we will indeed reveal here various useful information about the French company Soitec, its activities, its main competitors or its various partnerships but also its main strengths and weaknesses. We will also explain in detail how to perform your fundamental analysis of this stock by studying the right indicators. In the end, you will find all the necessary stock market advice to succeed in your study of the Soitec share and make efficient analysis on the stock market thanks to reliable and serious elements.
First of all, it should be noted that Soitec's activities are particularly cyclical, given that its products are positioned upstream in the production chain. The economic situation of the group's various customer markets and their evolution will therefore be carefully monitored.
Of course, we will also be closely monitoring the announced further increase in this company's turnover and its overall growth for the coming years. In this context, we will also be closely monitoring the achievement of the annual targets set by this group, which also concern margins and debt reduction.
Of course, we will keep an eye on all the news from Soitec's main competitors and the arrival on the market of a new product likely to compete directly with this company's flagship products.
Finally, we will of course be following Soitec's production figures, a good indicator of market demand, as well as future partnerships that will allow the group to expand more and more internationally, whether through acquisitions, joint ventures or commercial partnerships.
Soitec is a French company specialized in the production of innovative semiconductor materials. More precisely, it is one of the world's leading suppliers in this very specific sector of activity. The company's success is based on the use of cutting-edge technologies for the electronics and energy markets. It is therefore above all an innovative group that holds a portfolio of more than 3,000 patents, which enables it to offer its customers energy-efficient, high-performance and competitive products.
The Soitec Group also operates several large industrial sites, research and development facilities and sales offices in Europe and elsewhere in the world, including the United States and Asia.
The products manufactured and marketed by Soitec are mainly materials for the manufacture of electronic chips found in most of today's smartphones, tablets, computers and computer servers. But in reality, these materials are also increasingly used in the automotive industry, the connected object industry, and some medical and industrial equipment.
The product that made Soitec so popular and allowed it to achieve this interesting market position is silicon-on-insulator, also known as SOI, which inspired the choice of the company's name.
Soitec is today an international company that operates both in France, in Bernin near Grenoble, and in Singapore for its industrial centers. The company's research and development centers and its numerous sales offices are located mainly in France, but also in the United States, California and Arizona, China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
Today, the Soitec Group employs more than 1,000 people in its various centers and offices around the world.
Knowing the activities of the Soitec group will of course be very useful to analyze its share price. But you should also be familiar with the situation and the economic environment of this sector of activity, namely the manufacture of semiconductors, which is a particularly competitive sector in which the positioning of companies is constantly changing. It is therefore particularly interesting to base part of your analysis on the competition in this sector and its evolution over time. For this, do not hesitate to follow all the news about the semiconductor market which are very useful for your position taking as they are very frequently used by investors as a first order indicator. We are now going to tell you more about Soitec's main competitors, the top ten companies in this sector in terms of growth.
First of all, the Korean group Samsung has seen its sales of semiconductors increase very significantly in recent years. As a result, it became the leader in this industry at the end of 2017, taking the top spot from Intel, which had been ranked number one for over 25 years.
The American group Intel is thus in second position in this world ranking, just behind the number one.
Finally, the top three in semiconductors is completed with the SK Hynix group, which has also recorded remarkable growth in recent years.
In fourth place, we find another company that has experienced one of the strongest market growths in recent years, Micron Technologies.
The fifth place in this year's ranking goes to Broadcom Limited.
The American group Qualcomm is in sixth place in this world ranking.
Next up is Texas Instrument, which is therefore ranked seventh in the world in terms of semiconductor sales growth.
The Japanese group Toshiba is in eighth position in this ranking.
In ninth and penultimate place, we find the company NXP.
Finally, the tenth and last place of this ranking goes to NVidia which makes its entry in this top 10 of semiconductor companies since it was previously ranked in 13th place.
Of course, in order to maintain its position as a leader in the semiconductor market, it is essential for Soitec to work carefully on its relationships and partnerships with other companies. Soitec strives to create strong alliances with other companies that have similar or complementary businesses to its own. These partnerships are often an opportunity for the Soitec share to gain or lose points over a fairly short period of time and it is therefore very interesting for traders to use them to take positions. Here are some recent examples of Soitec's partnerships with some details about their content.
In 2010, for example, the Soitec Group signed a strategic partnership with TowerJazz to supply imagers that are used in many digital cameras and mobile phones, as well as in industry, medical imaging and automotive manufacturing. The two companies will then collaborate on the development and marketing of BSI CMOS imagers with prospects of more than 800 million dollars before 2013.
Also in 2014, the Soitec Group signed a commercial partnership with the Chinese company Shanghai Simgui for the exclusive sale of 200 mm SOI wafers in China. These wafers will be used in the manufacture of radio frequency communication ICs, in the manufacture of smartphones, power ICs or for automotive applications. This is the second such partnership between the two companies, which allows Soitec to strengthen its presence in the fast-growing and strategically important Chinese semiconductor market.
Finally, more recently in 2017, Soitec announced a partnership with California-based GlobalFoundries for an initial five-year period for the delivery of a large quantity of depleted FD-SOI wafers. The two companies were already partners in the past and this new agreement strengthens their alliance and the supply chain and thus the production of large volumes of these wafers. Indeed, it is thanks to the collaboration of these two companies that FD-SOI wafers have become standard technologies for the production of low-cost but high-quality components with the added bonus of very low power consumption. These wafers are used for high-volume applications in consumer electronics, connected objects and the latest automotive models.
First, let's recall that the Soitec Group has succeeded in positioning itself as the leader in the SOI or silicon wafer technology segment of the semiconductor industry. This technology, now recognized by the entire electronics and energy industries as a true benchmark, gives Soitec a virtual monopoly in this segment. Indeed, Soitec is currently the only company recognized for its advanced expertise in this technology and in depleted FD-SOI technology.
We can also appreciate the fact that the Soitec Group is no longer as dependent on the computer sector as it used to be, since its products now touch other production sectors such as the smartphone and tablet market, the connected objects market, the medical imaging market and the automotive industry. This lower exposure reduces the risk in the event of a downturn in a particular market.
As for Soitec's strengths, we can of course point to the quality of its strategic alliances, of which we cited a few recent examples above, which enable it to produce its components more easily or to market them more efficiently.
Of course, since Soitec is first and foremost an innovative company, its strong investment in research and development, which currently accounts for more than 9% of sales, is also an undeniable strength of the company.
Shareholders and investors in this stock are finally appreciating the fact that the group's earnings and financial results in general are doing very well, with the added bonus of a recent reduction in its debt and a restoration of its equity.
The first disadvantage of this value concerns the financial history of this company. Indeed, we can see that Soitec has experienced significant losses for nearly ten years, due to loss-making diversifications such as in the solar segment, but also because of several successive capital increases. If the situation seems fortunately better today, investors may fear a similar situation in the future and therefore hesitate to take buy positions.
The second weak point concerns the Soitec share, which shows a very high volatility, as you can see by looking at the historical charts. This volatility can of course be interesting for investors who prefer day-trading or short-term trading strategies, but it requires a good control of the investment and a good money management in order to limit the losses which can be important.
The capital of the Soitec Group is partly floating, i.e. public and freely traded on the market. This currently represents 61.17% of its share capital. The rest is owned by large private institutional or professional shareholders such as BPI France with 11.49%, CEA Investment with 11.49%, NSIG Sunrise SARL with 11.49%, Caisse des Dépôts et Consignation Entreprises et Valeurs Moyennes with 2.66%, Shin-Etsu Handotaï with 0.70%. Employees hold 0.13% and 0.87% are self-owned.
If you wish to invest in Soitec shares online, you can do so in two different ways: either by buying shares in the company and adding them to your securities account or PEA or by preferring to trade directly on the evolution of the share price through CFDs or contracts for difference, which allow you to speculate without holding the stock in a portfolio.
In order to carry out a good technical analysis of the Soitec share price, you can use several major trend and volatility indicators such as the RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, Moving Averages, Stochastic Indicators, Technical Support and Resistance Levels and Pivots. These indicators can be displayed on the charts provided by your broker.
