Microchip Technology Incorporated (MCHP)

How it makes money

Revenue comes from selling physical chips, mostly through distributors who hold inventory and resell to thousands of smaller customers, with the rest sold directly to larger accounts. Engineers design a specific Microchip part into a product years before it ships, and once that design is locked in, they rarely switch supplier for the life of that product, which gives revenue a slow-moving, order-book character rather than one driven by short-term demand shifts.

Revenue by segment

Once an engineer designs a Microchip part into a product, replacing it means re-qualifying a new chip across the whole design, a costly step most customers avoid once a product is in production. That stickiness is real but not unique to Microchip: rivals such as Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics and NXP compete for the same design-in decisions on the next product generation, so the advantage resets with every new product cycle.

Microchip sells into a huge range of industrial, automotive and consumer end markets, which smooths out any single customer's ups and downs, but the semiconductor industry as a whole still moves through pronounced boom-and-bust inventory cycles: distributors and customers over-order when supply is tight and work down stockpiles when it eases, amplifying the swing in Microchip's own order book beyond the swing in end demand.

Key risks

• Distributor concentration — Arrow Electronics alone represented 12% of fiscal 2026 net sales; a disruption at this distributor, or a change in its relationship with Microchip, would affect a meaningful share of revenue.
• Dependence on outside foundries — About 65% of fiscal 2026 sales came from products made at outside wafer foundries; capacity shortfalls or disruption at those foundries limit how much Microchip can ship, regardless of demand.
• Unabsorbed manufacturing capacity — Microchip paused expansion at two of its own fabs and recorded $200.8 million of unabsorbed capacity charges in fiscal 2026, a cost of owning factories that run below full utilisation during a downturn.
• Export controls and geopolitical restrictions — Roughly three-quarters of sales go to customers outside the United States; export controls, tariffs and an active investigation by Chinese authorities into US analog semiconductor makers could restrict where Microchip can sell.
• Intense price competition — Microchip competes against several large, well-funded semiconductor makers on price and technical performance, and states that intense competition in its markets creates ongoing pressure on margins.

Top customers account for 12% of revenue

Arrow Electronics, its largest distributor, accounted for 12% of net sales in fiscal 2026; no other distributor or direct customer exceeded 10%, so concentration sits with the distribution channel rather than any single end customer.