Chip designer Dialog Semiconductor said preliminary sales reached $431 million in the fourth quarter against a guidance range of $430 million-$470 million despite a slump in iPhone sales at its main customer Apple.
Around 75 percent of Dialog’s business is supplying power-management chips to Apple. The US-based Apple warned in November of slow year-end sales and on January 3 issued its first sales warning in 12 years, blaming weaker iPhone sales in China, Reuters reported.
Dialog Semiconductor CEO Jalal Bagherli said in November that Dialog was seeing less of an impact than other suppliers because its power-management chips were used across a broad range of Apple devices and not just in iPhones.
Dialog Semiconductor won a $600 million deal last October to transfer people and patents to Apple as part of a push to diversify its business.
The company says the deal will buy it time to expand into new areas such as the Internet of Things (IoT) that includes connected devices like home speakers, fitness trackers or smart watches.
Dialog Semiconductor said the deal was not expected to affect revenues in 2018. But Dialog will lose out on Apple power chip deals in coming quarters. The company, which will emerge smaller after the transaction, expects Apple to account for 35-40 percent of revenues by 2022.
Dialog Semiconductor said its cash on hand was $678 million at the end of 2018, up $199 million year-on-year, and that it was debt-free. It will publish audited results for 2018 on March 6.
