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AMBQ, Ambiq Micro Inc.
We are a pioneer and leading provider of ultra-low power semiconductor solutions designed to address the significant power consumption challenges of general purpose and AI compute especially at the edge.
Our leading position is built upon our hardware and software innovations that deliver two to five times lower power consumption than traditional semiconductor designs.
In 2025, we estimate that over 80% of our products ran AI algorithms.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Next report By 11/13 · the 10-Q for the quarter ended late September · due within 45 days of period end · has filed ~42 days after · the wire records it on arrival
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- Situation
- Unprofitable. No sustained operating profit across the record; an earnings multiple has nothing to rest on. What the record does show is revenue, the gross-margin trajectory, and the burn against the cash on hand. Net current asset value. Current assets alone exceed every liability combined, and the surplus is most of the balance sheet: the shape Graham called a net-net.
- What moves the needle
- Process leadership and the capex cycle. What decides it: staying ahead on the node, or designing around it as a fabless firm; the pricing power that lead brings; and not overbuilding into the downturn. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on customer concentration, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
Where the money comes from
read the 10-K →Revenue spreads across 4 regions, the largest China at 42%.
- China42%$31M
- Taiwan36%$26M
- Other Countries12%$9M
- Singapore10%$7M
From the segment footnote of the company's own 10-K. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
Revenue up 89.7% year over year
figures computed from the filing's XBRL
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
Will it survive?
- No meaningful interest burdenLittle or no interest expense reported
What this means
Little or no interest expense reported, the business isn't leaning on lenders to operate.
- Net cash, debt-freeCash $140M − debt $0
What this means
Cash and short-term investments exceed every dollar of debt by $140M, on net the company owes nothing, and can act from strength when others can't. Net debt is the leverage figure that matters: the cash is already set against the debt. Strategic or illiquid investments aren't counted here.
- Long (60+ days)DSO 37 + DIO 153 − DPO 77 days
What this means
Days cash is tied up between paying suppliers and collecting from customers. Lower is better; a long cycle means growth itself eats cash.
Is it a good business?
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median -17%
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median -8%
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
- Are earnings backed by cash? ($20M)Loss, and burning cashNet income ($36M) · cash from operations ($20M)
What this means
The company reported a net loss, so a conversion ratio isn't meaningful. What matters then is whether operations still threw off cash, here, they did not.
How is the cash used?
- Not enough data
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
- Investing or harvesting? —Not enough data
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
The promise and the pay packet
- Is the buyback buying ownership, or mopping up? 9.4%Stock pay, share count unreadStock compensation $7M (fiscal 2025), 9.4% of revenue · no repurchases · the share count is not comparable across these years (a split or a first listing sits in the record), so the drift is withheld
What this means
Stock handed to employees is a real cost paid in the owner's own currency: it is charged against profit, but the shares it creates are permanent. Many companies repurchase stock at the same time, which looks like a return of capital and often is not — if the count barely moves, the cash merely cancelled the pay packet and bought the owner nothing. The three states worth telling apart are a count genuinely shrinking, a count standing still despite large repurchases, and a count rising because the issuance was never offset at all.
Graham’s defensive tests · 1 of 2 met
Graham’s numerical criteria for the defensive investor (The Intelligent Investor, ch. 14), run on the filings. A floor of safety, not a buy signal; many fine modern businesses fail his strictest liquidity rules by design.
- Adequate size MissRevenue ≥ $2B · $73M
What this means
Big enough to weather a storm. Graham's 1972 floor was ~$100M of sales (≈ $700M today); we use a $2B revenue line as a conservative modern stand-in.
- Strong liquidity PassCurrent ratio ≥ 2× · 8.76×
What this means
Current assets at least twice current liabilities, near-term bills covered without touching the business. Strict by design: many cash-rich modern firms run leaner and miss it, holding their cushion in longer-dated securities.
- Moderate price —P/E ≤ 15 and P/E × P/B ≤ 22.5 · decided by the price
What this means
Graham's valuation gate, the wall he kept between a sound business and a sound investment. Three-year average earnings are $-1.57/share (latest year $-1.51), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $6.72/share. Enter a price in “What the price implies” just below for the P/E, P/B, and whether it clears. But this is the rule Buffett outgrew: there's no hard P/E law, and a wonderful business can deserve a far richer multiple if the thesis holds, treat it as the bargain-hunter's floor, not a verdict on the price.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Current Position
as of the latest quarter, Jun 30, 2026Can the business pay what it owes this year, off the freshest balance sheet: the quality of the assets, the debt actually coming due, and what a low ratio means here.
- Cash & short-term investments$367M
- Receivables$18M
- Inventory$29M
- Other current assets$3M
- Accounts payable$11M
- Other current liabilities$16M
From the company's latest filing.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid.
- Insider ownership10%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- Stock-based compensation$7M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares in fiscal 2025, 9.4% of revenue. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- How much of the revenue rides on one buyer?≈$89M · 91% of revenue on the largest customers (TTM)
“For the years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024, our top five end customers accounted for 91% and 92% of our net sales, respectively, based on the sell-through information provided to us by our distributors.”verify →
- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Revenue recognition, Inventory, Stock compensation as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, Semiconductors
The same industry, side by side on owner economics, research and the inventory cycle. Each column names the period it is read over, and a median resting on fewer than three years carries that count beside it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each figure against.
| Company | Revenuelatest FY, USD | Gross marginmedian over the record | Op. marginmedian over the record | ROICmedian over the record | Owner earn. marginmedian over the record | R&D / revenuelatest FY | Capex / revenuelatest FY | Inventory dayslatest FY |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AXTIAXT Inc | $88M | 32% | 6.0% | 4% | -16% | 10.2% | 6.8% | 387 |
| AMBQAmbiq Micro Inc. | $73M | 38%2y | -54.0%2y | -141%1y | — | 53.1% | — | 153 |
| AIPArteris Inc. | $71M | 90% | -56.0% | -11163%2y | -3% | 70.7% | 2.0% | — |
| MRAMEverspin Technologies Inc. | $55M | 52% | -14.1% | -29% | 11% | 25.5% | 12.4% | 145 |
| NVTSNavitas Semiconductor Corporation | $46M | 33% | -196.7% | -41% | -108% | 108.5% | 3.2% | 153 |
| KOPNKopin Corporation | $39M | 35% | -65.8% | -70% | -40% | 17.0% | 3.7% | — |
| LPTHLightPath Technologies Inc. | $37M | 35% | -4.8% | -5% | -0% | 8.2% | 3.4% | 173 |
| ICGIntchains Group Limited | $33M | 55% | 5.6% | 8% | -8% | — | 2.1% | 93 |
| Group median | — | 37% | -34.0% | -35% | — | 25.5% | — | 153 |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFThe owner-earnings base could not be formed from this filing’s tagged data (operating cash flow or capital spending is missing), so the owner-earnings reverse-DCF has no base to grow. We read the price from both ends instead: type a price to see the profitability it demands, then set the mature margin you would believe and weigh the two against each other. Nothing leaves your browser unless you enter it in your notebook.
Enter a price to run it.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Two reads of one future. From your price: the owner earnings the company must reach, valued at a mature multiple and discounted back at your rate, expressed as the margin it implies on revenue grown at your rate. From your belief: the mature margin you would credit, set on the dial above. When the margin the price demands runs above the one you would believe, you are paying for a future taken on faith. For a deep cyclical at a trough, normalized through-cycle earnings are the better lens; this mode is for the genuinely unprofitable, and for the profitable business whose capital spending currently outruns its cash.
Manual order: ← AMBA its page in the Manual AMC →
Industry order: ← AMBA the Semiconductors chapter AMD →