NXP closes the books on a tumultuous year

Believe it or not, 2020 was a better year for NXP than the year before. In 2019, the Eindhoven-headquartered chipmaker saw its revenue drop 6 percent year-on-year, whereas over 2020 the decline was ‘only’ 3 percent, to 8.6 billion dollars. The company stayed well clear of losses too, with an operating income of 418 million dollars (-35 percent) and a net income of 80 million dollars (-71 percent). The so-called non-GAAP operating income, used by NXP to provide a better comparison with previous periods, was 2.23 billion dollars (-13 percent). Not a bad result for a year in which the world was enveloped in a pandemic the likes of which haven’t been seen in a century.

The – all things considered – decent financial performance is the result of a sharp rebound in demand in the second half of the year, which mostly made up for a pretty bad start. NXP’s quarterly revenue declined 12 and 10 percent sequentially in Q1 and Q2, respectively, only to increase 25 and 11 percent in Q3 and Q4. In automotive, from which NXP derives about half of its revenue, the fluctuations were even more pronounced: -9, -32, +43 and +24 percent going from Q1 to Q4.