Wireless Industry Analyst

Over the last few weeks, I have been writing about SiRF. I am amply clear that a merger or acquisition would be the best end-game for the company today. The earnings conference call did not offer any immediate solace to SiRF investors though the company executives promised a turn of fortunes by the end of this year. In this article, I will conclude this series with a valuation of the GPS leader. I have carried this valuation primarily from an acquisition stand-point. To appreciate the perspectives offered in this piece, I recommend catching up on your reading here, here and here.

My most optimistic valuation of SiRF is at $11.70 per share. In estimating the company’s value, I assumed that the company’s management can carry its restructuring exercise well enough to bring its operating expenses back on track and close to 35% of the revenue. Despite my skepticism, I have also assumed liberal market shares in the various segments.

SiRF’s woes primarily are due to its inability to counter the new wave of competition in the burgeoning cellular handset market. The TAM for the cellular handset GPS is expected to double to over $1bn in 2010 and beyond. Excluding Qualcomm’s market share, the rest of the cellular handset GPS TAM is expected to be 40-50% of the TAM for the mobile GPS market.
Secondly, the driver behind the mass adoption of GPS in mobile handsets is the reduction in ASP. Its high-performance receivers notwithstanding, SiRF runs the risk of being marginalized as more and more mobile chipset providers bundle and aggressively price GPS solutions with their products.

Thirdly, even in segments where it has a dominant presence today, SiRF will find tough competition moving forward. Broadcom (Global Locate) replaced SiRF in ONE (TomTom’s best-selling PND.) Even the portable CE and Portable computer segments for which SiRF is collaborating with Intel will also face stiff competition from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon and Snap Star solutions.

In summary, I don’t see the company getting anywhere close to its glory days again. The 52-week high of $30.61 is but a dream. I have been maintaining so far that its current range for SiRF’s share price is too low. Perhaps, not any more! If SiRF continues to incur heavy expenses and fails to retain its mobile market share, I would value it close to $6. So, the market is justified in its caution.

$11.70 would be my price for an acquisition. If the company decides to stay by itself, the realization of this value will solely depend on efficient expense management and the ability of SiRF to efficiently retain good market share levels.

[I picked up the company’s shares close to its bottom. I will monitor its movement and offload it at around $10-$11 without blinking an eye. But that is just me!]

In my last post on SiRF, I mentioned that SiRF will likely merge or get acquired. For those of you missed it, you can read it here. I finished with a teaser suggesting a merger with Marvell as one of the options. Let us look at why this is possible. Before you read on, I should warn you that this is just a speculation. So take it with a pinch of salt and more of a synergy analysis.

To reassert my point on SiRF, the company might have stayed a little too long as a GPS company without acquiring other connectivity solutions or pairing up with a complementary solution provider. With mobile driving GPS growth, SiRF may find itself marginalized in this space despite its leadership. You can find earlier coverage on this topic here, here and here.

Marvell, on the other hand, lacks GPS capabilities. Sehat Sutardja, Marvell’s CEO, suggested that GPS has to be commoditized to have only an incremental cost impact on the mobile phone silicon. All said and done, if it cannot have a competitive GPS solution in the next couple of years, it will lose its baseband communications processor customers. The integration of application and communication processors also implies potential share loss in the application processor market. You can read more on Marvell’s connectivity solutions capability in my valuation series here and here.

If SiRF merges with Marvell, the latter will have a complete portfolio of connectivity solutions complementing its WLAN, Bluetooth and FM capabilities. It will also get DVB-H for mobile broadcasting. This will allow the Santa Clara-based Marvell to develop its own mobile platform if it finds relevant demand. I agree that Marvell already has enough financial headaches and operating expense issues to take care of. These will certainly be deterrents against any new merger. But we should note that SiRF is a fairly nimble company. So, Marvell should get favorable margins from the fabless SiRF.

The combined entity can definitely benefit from synergies. Both companies have RIMM as its customer. But in the future, this position will be challenged given aggressive pricing and bundling from the leading vendors. Broadcom, both companies’ main competition, has the potential to displace both of them from these accounts. A merger can help ward this situation off. Marvell’s efficiency can help lower the costs of GPS as it envisions. Besides, SiRF’s strong IP position in GPS will give the company good leverage during licensing discussions.

Finally, while I don’t want to read too much into it, I cannot ignore the Banatao connection. Diosdado Banatao, is now the chairman and interim CEO of SiRF. Given his reputation as a successful serial entrepreneur, his appointment as the interim head itself seems to point to an M&A. it also makes the Marvell angle more likely. He was intimately involved with Marvell as an early stage investor and as a board director until 2003. He knows the Sutardjas very well. He knows Marvell’s work culture, strengths and product portfolio and should have a better sense of the synergies between these companies than anyone else out there. So we can trust him to at least give this idea a good thought.

In summary, it is possible that SiRF and Marvell may merge. It may not be a bad strategy for either company. I will leave the price of such a deal to a SiRF valuation analysis that I am planning to do soon.

(For the interested reader, I have done an extensive valuation analysis of Marvell which will complete this weekend. You can read the first few articles of this series here, here and here)

[Long SiRF at the time of writing]

Michael Canning resigned last week as the CEO of SiRF, the leading GPS silicon provider. Besides the events leading up to it, the announcement itself reaffirms my belief that SiRF’s end-game, whether it likes it or not, is to merge or get acquired.

As early as last summer, when SiRF’s shares were soaring, I questioned its strategy of focusing on stand-alone GPS solutions unmindful of the bigger trends towards integration and convergent connectivity solutions in the mobile world. Mobile companies like Broadcom and NXP (which recently got acquired by STM) acquired smaller GPS companies. SiRF, on its part, did not attempt to pair up with WLAN or Bluetooth solution providers but instead focused on a DVB-H product for mobile broadcasting. Contrast this with Atheros, a WLAN provider with comparable market cap last year, which has expanded its portfolio to have Bluetooth, GPS and Ethernet over the past couple of years and you will notice a flaw in SiRF’s thinking so far. You can read my thoughts on the Broadcom’s Global Locate acquisition here and Atheros’ GPS moves here.

Despite the booming GPS market and its acquisition of Centrality last year, SiRF may have just let the mobile market slip away from its hands. Broadcom especially seems to be doing a stellar job in stealing customers away from SiRF. The loss in market share led to bad quarters and the company’s share price has since tumbled to its nadir. While I think that this price drop is a little harsh, it does surprise me that most people did not see this coming. More insights and explanations about the SiRF strategy can be found here and here.

Now, with Qualcomm, Broadcom, STM-NXP and TI having GPS capabilities, SiRF has limited room to maneuver in the mobile space. Additionally, companies like Atheros and CSR are broadening their portfolios to fill in the gaps. Faced with the increased possibility of being marginalized, it looks like SiRF will have to align itself with the others who have a realistic chance in the mobile space or with a microprocessor/computer chipset company to sell with laptops.

So far, the deterrent for most companies trying to get SiRF was the latter’s huge market capitalization. That is not true any more. Besides, the company is now on its back-foot. A company like Intel can easily grab the company. But of late, I feel that a merger with Marvell is a good possibility as well. I will let you think about this for a day. Check this space tomorrow for my reasons why.

[Long SiRF at the time of writing]

• interest shown by cellular companies in GPS: This was even before Atheros made a smart move picking up U-Nav (incidentally, I had stated then that U-Nav would be acquired too) and NXP got GloNav. I also mentioned that SiRF with its $2 billion market cap (then) was too big to be acquired. Now the company finds its value almost reduced to a fourth of that valuation.
  
• Other companies wanting to grad more silicon: That left SiRF as more of a one-trick pony!
• 'Keep the Bill of Materials low' dictum: Effectively, with more competition comes lower margins. This was something I saw as a critical issue that faced SiRF. Today, this has shown its ugly face with a reduced gross margin that has got the Street scampering.
  

I have, so far, refrained from expressing my opinions about my company, Atheros Communications (ATHR). But late last week, we announced that we will acquire u-Nav Microelectronics for $54 million that includes $15.4 million in cash and 1.28 million shares of Atheros common stock. This news has forced me out of my silence.

Firstly, I am happy that Atheros has added an extremely important strategic piece to its portfolio. I have, in my articles dating back to July, mentioned that the future of wireless is in integration-the ability of the same wireless chip or card to support multiple technologies. Qualcomm has been a traditional champion of this notion. Whether it is Snapdragon, its omnipotent chipset or its Gobi move, Qualcomm has been promoting integration around its core mobile capabilities. Broadcom, a key WLAN player, sought to expand its portfolio to include 3G, Bluetooth and completed it with GPS capabilities from Global Locate earlier this year. I had written that other semiconductor companies will hence have to acquire this technology through internal development, acquisitions or strong alliances. Today, I am glad that Atheros understands this as it positions itself as a future champion of the wireless industry. With its leadership in PC WLAN market and exciting solutions in Bluetooth and mobile WLAN, it is not surprising that Atheros got the “Most Respected Emerging Public Fabless Company” award from FSA this year. The GPS move can only help strengthen its future outlook.

Secondly, it signifies a bigger consolidation of the wireless industry and its various components. While I will not glorify this acquisition, I do wish to emphasize that the future survival of a wireless company is contingent on its portfolio expansion. These companies can no longer afford to be one-trick ponies. Thus, we are likely to see some significant trends through the next couple of years.

• Mobile companies shopping for other GPS companies: The problem is that not many small players with competitive solutions are available in the market today. Few names that crop up include SkyTraq, CellGuide, NemeriX etc. It will be interesting to see players like Marvell, NXP and Freescale get GPS capabilities.
• Companies may exit 3G space: A lot of the GPS action has taken off along with 3G technologies. The consumer also wants powerful devices. With the market slowly consolidating on the mobile side, players like Qualcomm and TI will thrive while Broadcom, STM and Infineon (each of whom have GPS in their kitty) could take a part of the pie, especially with interest from vendors such as Nokia and Apple. For the others, it is a do-or-die situation. If they cannot acquire GPS capabilities, they cannot be competitive and hence risk losing out in this space. This in turn implies a further consolidation of the market with companies announcing their exit slowly.
• More technology integration: We have a list of mobile broadcasting standards that fall in this list. SiRF, for example, complements its GPS core competence with DVB-H capabilities it acquired through TrueSpan in 2006. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform can integrate most broadcasting standards. We also have integration across multiple standards as demonstrated by Gobi.

Thus, the next two years will be fairly crucial for a lot of the wireless players. As for Atheros, at a price of $54 million, it won itself an entry into an important technology market, a good product, good engineering expertise and a ticket to the wireless future.

In my previous article, I had mentioned that Sirf will have to re-invent itself and align with a cellular or WLAN chipmaker to have a more secure future. I had, however, missed this press-release on that same day.

http://www.sirf.com/PressRoom/Press.aspx?PressId=132

Sirf has inked a deal with Intel to license and co-develop GPS solutions for "Intel-inside" laptops. This is significant for the same reasons I had enlisted in my previous article. Bundling with a WLAN solution would help the marketability of Sirf's products. Besides, most laptops coming out today have WLAN in them and are likely to have mobile-chips in the future (dual-mode 3G/WLAN card and the likes). If Sirf can get something similar inked on the mobile-side, then it would be a more interesting future for them.

From Intel's perspective, this is almost a no-brainer. BroadCom purchased Global Locate and is sure to look at bundling the GPS receiver with their WLAN offerings for laptops and mobiles. Though the two companies' products don't compete directly in the WLAN market, any non-Intel laptop with an additional feature can be a market-grabbing product. Besides, QualComm is definitely targetting the data-card market for laptops. So, Intel had to fill in that feature deficiency.

Intel's move now adds pressure on other WLAN providers to deliver on the GPS front. It remains to be seen if these other WLAN providers will be pro-active and find a way to support GPS in their future products.

While the IP battle rages, BroadCom is slowly moving towards a more complete UMTS solution. It recently announced a $146+80 million acquisition of Global Locate, a GPS company. Now, they are equipped to enter the niche market of chips with integrated features. With previous Wi-Fi, blue-tooth and FM capabilities and with the new range of GPS products and IP from Global Locate, BroadCom's game would be to bundle all these with its UMTS chip, with the hope of shutting the other small players in the fragmented UMTS market.

As I have mentioned in a previous article, the company with the super-set of features is most likely to have a design win with a device manufacturer since the latter would want to build a single platform to support these chips. QualComm, for example, already has Wi-Fi and GPS assets from Airgo and Snaptrack respectively, and is thereby positioned as a front-runner in the race, especially with superior modems. BroadCom appears a little late in obtaining GPS but then we should remember that the company was getting its act together with the modem performance and interoperability testing earlier. With those issues likely out of the way,it is now attempting to carve a niche or at least is trying to become one of the top 3 UMTS IC supplier with a more complete product offering. Of course, it remains to be seen if the pace of QualComm's R&D efforts can be matched. While the industry is grappling to get the basic HSDPA act together, QualComm is already gravitating towards the next generation HS chips. BroadCom's hope perhaps is that the ITC ban will divert resources within QualComm thereby giving it some extra time to try and catch up with its bitter rival.

Also, it remains to be seen now what Marvell and Free-scale are thinking on the GPS front. They don't have GPS features as yet and there are not too many small companies to grab at now. Would they try to license from the $1.6 billion Sirf or are they likely to take the acquisition route? If it is the latter, the time is running out, both from an availability stand-point and a design-win stand-point. BroadCom is already making noises about making it to the top 5 UMTS IC suppliers. So we should see some more GPS deals soon. I also think that the window of opportunity for all the other players is getting smaller by the day and the weaker/financially poorer ones are likely to be left out. We will see market consolidation in this space and a few clear winners emerging. In the meanwhile, let us wait and watch the frantic action!