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ON Semiconductor (ON): Silisiumkarbid driver elektrifisering

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Driver elektrifiseringsrevolusjonen

Når man diskuterer trenden med elektrifisering, har både tekniske eksperter og investorer en tendens til å fokusere på nye produkter, som elbiler og batterier, siden de er kjernen i det som driver trenden fremover.

Imidlertid, etter hvert som flere prosesser blir elektrifisert, må mer elektrisk kraft måles, kontrolleres og ledes i riktig retning.

Dette er oppgaven med å drive elektroniske komponenter. Det er forskjellig fra elektriske systemer fordi vi her snakker om svært intense og svært variable kraftbelastninger, som må kontrolleres svært presist for å forhindre skade på batteripakker, solcelleinvertere og andre kritiske systemer.

Et viktig materiale for denne oppgaven er silisiumkarbid, en type silisium‑karbonforbindelse som brukes i høyenergi elektriske systemer. Så boomen i elbiler og fornybar energi har også vært en boom i etterspørselen etter silisiumkarbid, med særlig ett selskap som har hatt stor nytte av dette: ON Semiconductor (ON ).

ON Prisdiagram

ON Semiconductor: Selskapsoversikt

ON Semiconductor er et halvlederfirma som spesialiserer seg på elektrifisering, inkludert innen bilindustrien, men også i andre sektorer som solenergi, batterier, romfart, telekommunikasjon, datasentre og medisinsk.

De fleste av ON Semiconductors (Onsemi) markeder vokser mye raskere enn resten av økonomien, og skaper et raskt voksende total adresserbart marked (TAM) for selskapet, verdt 44 milliarder dollar og med en årlig vekst på 18 %.

Selskapet var opprinnelig et spin‑off fra Motorola tilbake i 1999, med en børsnotering i 2000. På den tiden var Motorola en pioner innen transistorer og logiske enheter.

En annen viktig del av selskapet kom med oppkjøpet av Fairchild Semiconductor av Onsemi i 2016, som var en pioner innen silisiumtransistorer og integrerte kretser, men også innen silisiumkarbid.

Selskapet har også kjøpt opp mange andre mindre virksomheter innen sensorer og halvledere de siste to tiårene, og samlet en bred rekke relaterte patenter og teknologier.

Onsemi’s string of acquisitions and consolidation of the industry’s silicon carbide market continues, notably with the recent acquisition of Qorvo Inc.’s (QRVO ) Silicon Carbide Junction Field-Effect Transistor (SiC JFET) technology.

Today, silicon carbide technology forms the core of the company. It is used in power electronics for controllers and power transfer and also for many types of sensors that integrate with the power electronics components.

“Vårt brede produktsortiment har gjort oss i stand til å bli en totalleverandør for våre kunder og kilden til de mest optimaliserte løsningene.”

Hassane El‑Khoury – On Semiconductor CEO

Nøkkelindikatorer & Markedsposisjon

In 2024, Onsemi made $7.1B in revenues, employing 26,000+ people across 19 manufacturing sites worldwide spread in 9 countries, 8 engineering centers in 5 countries, and 43 design centers in 19 countries.

It has a very extensive catalog of semiconductor components, mostly focused on silicon carbide, with a total portfolio of 37,000+ items.

This extensive portfolio has made Onsemi the #1 in image sensors for automotive and industrial applications. It controls a 68% market share in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and a 27% market share in industrial applications.

The company is one of the top 10 global semiconductor suppliers to the automotive industry. The automotive segment provided 60% of the company’s revenues, followed by industrial applications (24%).

This matches the company’s strategy of using vertical integration, end-to‑to‑end supply chain, and wide silicon carbide portfolio to target a control of more than 1/3rd of this market.

Kjerneteknologi: Silisiumkarbid

Silisiumkarbid: Fordeler & Anvendelser

Silisiumkarbid is unique in its ability to handle very large power loads, notably thanks to a 10x higher electric field capacity.

This allows for silicon carbide devices to be smaller, have much smaller losses, and be able to switch on and off more quickly.

It also has 3x the thermal conductivity of “normal” silicon, allowing for much quicker heat dissipation when exposed to high charges.

It is made of an intertwined network of both silicon and carbon atoms in a crystalline form.

Silicon carbide is remarkably hard and durable. It can be used for drills and as an industrial abrasive. It is also chemically inert, providing great resistance to corrosion.

Strategi for vertikal integrasjon

A key focus of the company has been to vertically integrate all the steps of silicon carbide production, which are far from simple. From raw material production of ingots to the production of wafers, designs of chips, production of the components, and packaging, Onsemi keeps a tight control of every step.

This makes the company very different from other semiconductor companies in the silicon-based industry, where each supplier usually specializes only in a specific step, creating a very complex supply chain.

The vertical integration of SiC chip manufacturing for the EV market empowers manufacturers to lower costs, enhance quality control, drive innovation, and deliver more cost-effective products.

This level of vertical integration also reduces the risk of supply chain disruption and speeds up the development of new products.

Bil- og elbil‑ladingsapplikasjoner

The company’s largest segment of activity is cars, which have started to integrate more silicon carbide with the transition to hybrids and EV solutions. Onsemi products are now integrated into more than 500 different car models.

Charging and energy storage solutions are other adjacent segments where Onsemi is active, especially the high‑power fast chargers for EVs. It can provide a wide range of solutions, from low‑cost platforms for cheap vehicles to ultra‑high performance for luxury car models.

In addition to power supply, Onsemi has an installed base of more than 450 million automotive sensors. This will likely keep growing, as silicon carbide sensors are both more energy efficient and perform better in low‑light settings, which will be crucial for building safe self‑driving cars.

Datasentre: Kraft & AI‑vekst

Silicon carbide components are vital to the data center, especially for the power racks, but also for the compute racks with power controllers at multiple levels.

As the volume of data centers being built or upgraded grows, so does the market for power electronics to supply them.

In total, Onsemi can hope for up to $5M per data center in potential sales in a new facility. As AI is radically boosting data center construction, this could prove a segment growing even faster than automotive for the company, with sales having grown 100% year‑to‑year in Q1 2025.

Industrielle, solenergi & nye sektorer

One major application for silicon carbide and other power electronics outside of computing and EVs is solar power. Onsemi can provide components for all levels of power, from residential installations to massive utility solar power plants.

While the company sales pitch focuses initially on scalability, speed of delivery, and price, it also provides high performance and small size & weight through an optimized mix of silicon and silicon carbide technologies.

Another important sector is industrial imaging and sensors. This includes image and light sensors of all sorts, as well as ultrasonic sensors, electrochemical sensors, and inductive sensors (metallic object detection).

Electrochemical sensing could be a new field for the company in the long run, such as its new CEM102, a continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) and blood gas sensor.

CEM102 can be combined to RSL15 – the industry’s lowest-power Bluetooth Low Energy-enabled MCU – to form a complete solution that allows for very low-power biosensors and environmental sensors to accurately measure chemically generated currents.

The company also produces MOSFET, or Metal‑Oxide‑Semiconductor Field‑Effect Transistor.

They are used to optimize energy use, stability, and reliability of electric components of cars, power tools, drones, and telecom devices.

Redusere sjeldne jordartsrisikoer med SiC

As trade wars, tariffs, and sanctions disrupt the USA‑China trade relations, the automotive industry is facing the very serious issue of potentially running out of China‑made rare earth materials.

This is a field where Onsemi can help, thanks to its silicon carbide allowing for separately excited synchronous motors, removing the need for permanent magnets requiring rare earth.

So while on the one hand, Onsemi’s business could suffer if the EV supply chain was severely disrupted, on the other hand, its solutions could be more widely adopted in new EV designs in the future, in order to reduce the reliance and dependencies on foreign rare earth supplies.

Strategiske partnerskap & store kunder

The company is part of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes. Its products are sold to a diverse pool of business customers, with more than 600+ silicon carbide customers. The top 20 customers represent approximately 40% of total sales, and they buy on average 600 different products each.

  • Strategisk samarbeid med Volkswagen Group for neste generasjons elbiler.
  • Integrering av Onsemi silisiumkarbid i BMW-, Hyundai-, Mercedes- og Nio‑biler.
  • Avansert bildesystem for ARRI, Ridevision, ZEEKR og SensiML.
  • Samarbeid med Ampt for solenergi leverandører i stor skala.

Ultimately, the list of existing customers is so large that it includes most of the world’s manufacturers of EVs, computers, appliances, batteries, telecom equipment, data centers, scientific instruments, etc.

Finansiell ytelse & Kontantstrømstrategi

By reaching the scale it needed, Onsemi has seen its free cash flow grow very rapidly since 2019, with a goal to reach as much as $3.5-4B by 2027. The company has been redistributing up to 66% of free cash flow to shareholders through share repurchases in Q1 2025.

This is expected to be achievable thanks to still growing gross margins (currently 49%) with production scaling‑up in silicon carbide, new products in auto and industrial applications, and optimization of the semiconductor foundries of the company, including ramping up the only US‑based 300mm power semiconductor fab.

F&U & Fremtidige innovasjoner

To a wide extent, ON Semiconductor products are the result of a constant string of innovation and improvement over previous designs and manufacturing processes. This is not to say that the company has not several times revolutionized the field, but it has mostly focused on improving existing products and finding new applications for silicon carbide in new industries.

For example, silicon‑carbide‑based sensors for glucose and blood monitoring could enter into competition with legacy sensors in medical devices thanks to low power consumption.

An advanced depth sensor for industrial applications is also a new field explored by Onsemi with the release of the Hyperlux sensor, able to perform depth sensing up to 30 meters, or four times further than standard indirect time‑of‑flight (iToF) sensors. This could open new markets for Onsemi in robotics, logistics, drones, agriculture, and farming.

Another potential market could for example include aeronautics, with silicon carbide used by GE in electrical power systems, and avionics (aircraft electronics and computers).

In the long run, more radical innovation could become important, as silicon carbide has for example been used recently by researchers to develop graphene‑semiconductors.

Siste ON-aksjenyheter og utviklinger

Konklusjon: Opprettholde SiC‑lederposisjonen

ON Semiconductor is a very important and advanced semiconductor manufacturing company that has early on specialized in non‑silicon semiconductor manufacturing, especially silicon carbide.

This has given it an edge, as the sector was relatively small until the boom in EVs. So, Onsemi managed to consolidate into a vertically integrated company all the key technologies related to silicon carbide before EVs created a much larger and quickly growing market.

This resulted in a company that, in its niche, could be compared to the merging into a sole company of the equivalent in the silicon chip industry of the entire supply chain, like merging together Nvidia (NVDA ), TSMC (TSM ), ASML (ASML ), Applied Material (AMAT ), LAM Research (LRCX ), etc.

As silicon carbide technology is finding new applications in equally booming sectors, like solar energy and data centers, or even robotics and health monitoring, this gives ON Semiconductor a massive growth potential, even if it were to never grow its market share. Which seems unlikely considering the company’s track record in the past decade.

So, as long as electrification and more connected sensors remain a dominant trend, a phenomenon likely to last well into the 2050s, ON Semiconductor’s growth trajectory seems relatively safe.

The presence of unique Onsemi manufacturing facilities on the US territory should also help shield it from most of the consequences of tariffs. Instead, tariffs could become a potential help for the company’s sales, as industrial and automotive companies in the USA are looking for safer, local alternatives to Chinese suppliers.

(You can also check our Top 10 Semiconductor Equipment Stocks for more ideas on companies in the sector.)

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Jonathan er en tidligere biokjemisk forsker som har arbeidet med genetisk analyse og kliniske studier. Han er nå aksjeanalytiker og finansskribent med fokus på innovasjon, markedssykluser og geopolitikk i sin publikasjon 'The Eurasian Century'.⁣⁣⁣​⁣