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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.
We do not intend our use or display of other entities' trade names, trademarks or service marks to imply a relationship with, or endorsement or sponsorship of us by, any other entity. 2 AMBIQ MICRO, INC.
Our leading position is built upon our hardware and software innovations that deliver two to five times lower power consumption than traditional semiconductor designs.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
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.
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
“We concluded that the material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting occurred because we did not have the necessary business processes, systems, and related internal controls necessary to satisfy the accounting and financial reporting…”
The figures below are only as sound as the controls that produced them. read the note →
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 -10%
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median -16%
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)
In the filing’s words The filing discloses a material weakness in its financial controls — the reported numbers here, and the record built on them, are only as reliable as the controls that produced them.
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.
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 $-1.78/share (latest year $-1.71), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $7.60/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.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Low contestabilityThe moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.
The filing raises AI among its risks, but in other terms (security, regulation, energy or the like), not as a competitor to its product; it frames AI mainly as a capability.
AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat, and the company is using it that way.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Current Position
as of the latest quarter, Mar 31, 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$205M
- Receivables$11M
- Inventory$23M
- Other current assets$3M
- Accounts payable$8M
- Other current liabilities$12M
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 this year, 9% 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.
Peers, Semiconductors
The same industry, side by side on owner economics. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | Gross margin | Op. margin | ROIC | Owner earn. margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NNDMNano Dimension Ltd. | $102M | 43% | -155.1% | -14% | -70% |
| AXTIAXT Inc | $88M | 32% | 6.0% | 4% | -16% |
| AMBQAmbiq Micro Inc. | $73M | 44% | -54.5% | -141% | — |
| AIPArteris Inc. | $71M | 90% | -56.0% | — | -3% |
| MPTIM-tron Industries Inc. | $54M | — | 10.4% | 19% | 9% |
| NVTSNavitas Semiconductor Corporation | $46M | 33% | -196.7% | -41% | -108% |
| KOPNKopin Corporation | $39M | 35% | -65.8% | -70% | -40% |
| LPTHLightPath Technologies Inc. | $37M | 35% | -4.8% | -5% | -0% |
| Group median | — | 35% | -55.3% | -14% | — |
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 →