Teradyne, Inc. (TER)

Comment l'entreprise gagne de l'argent

Teradyne sells testing systems as capital equipment: a chipmaker buys a tester as a one-time purchase (plus ongoing service and software fees), sized to how many chips it plans to run through its factories. Because a chipmaker only needs to buy enough testers to cover its production capacity, Teradyne's orders rise sharply when the industry is building new fabs or launching high-volume chips like AI processors, and fall just as sharply once that capacity is in place and utilized.

Chiffre d'affaires par segment

A chipmaker qualifies a specific tester model into its production line only after months of validation, and reprogramming test routines for a new vendor's machine is expensive and slow — so once Teradyne wins a fab, it tends to keep supplying it. The moat is narrow rather than wide because Advantest is a comparably strong rival, particularly in memory testing, and a major customer can and does qualify both.

Orders depend on how much new chip production capacity the industry is building, which moves in sharp cycles: a shortage triggers a wave of new fab investment and tester orders, and the resulting overcapacity then causes orders to collapse until demand catches up again. AI chip demand has driven the current upswing in Semiconductor Test, but the segment has swung from boom to bust before.

Principaux risques

• Revenue concentrated in a few large chipmakers — A limited number of large semiconductor customers drive a substantial share of Semiconductor Test purchases, both directly and through their supply partners, so any one customer's slowdown has an outsized effect.
• Boom-bust capital-spending cycle — Tester orders follow the industry's fab-building cycle, which has swung from shortage to overcapacity within a few quarters before, making Teradyne's near-term order book difficult to predict.
• Robotics division has struggled to scale — Robotics revenue declined in 2025 on weaker sales of collaborative arms and mobile robots, and the division has yet to prove it can grow reliably alongside the core testing business.
• Concentrated competition from Advantest — Advantest is a comparably scaled rival, especially in memory testing, and a customer that qualifies both suppliers can shift volume between them based on price or delivery, limiting Teradyne's pricing power.

Teradyne states that a limited number of large customers account for a substantial share of Semiconductor Test purchases, without disclosing an exact percentage; losing one of these customers, or a shift in their capital spending, would be far from a marginal event.