CompanyGraph
It designs mixed-signal and audio processing chips that other companies manufacture on contract, earning from the sale of finished components built into consumer electronic devices.
- Depends onDownstream position: depends on 18 industries, supplies 5
- ScaleMarket cap is $5.53B, above the global median of $1.18B
- PositionReturn on equity is 20.9%, higher than 95% of its Semiconductors peers (median 5.2%)
- Interpretations10 currently firing — 10
What this company is and how it runs — written from structure, not news.
The system draws on a wide base of external supplying industries and converts that into a narrower stream of output aimed at a small set of downstream device industries. Because it owns no wafer fabrication or assembly plant of its own, its coordinating function is to direct external manufacturing partners toward its own chip designs rather than to operate physical production directly.
It earns through one-time product sales rather than subscriptions or usage fees: revenue is recognized when a shipped chip transfers to the customer under a fixed contract price, adjusted for returns, price protection and stock rotation, with payment collected shortly after invoicing.
Its scale is supported by an asset-light design model: it owns no manufacturing plant, so growth in sales does not require proportional growth in fixed manufacturing assets. Alongside this, its returns on assets and equity, operating margin and conversion of operating cash flow into free cash flow all sit toward the upper end of its industry peer range, and cash on hand covers most of its debt, suggesting growth is funded from its own operations rather than from added physical capacity or external leverage.
It depends on a small number of external wafer foundries and assembly-and-test contractors rather than owning any fabrication plant itself: its filings name GlobalFoundries and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company as its wafer foundries, and Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Amkor Technology, STATS ChipPAC, SFA Semicon and Siliconware Precision Industries as its assembly and test contractors. It also depends on recruiting specialized engineering talent and on continued access to foundry capacity, materials and advanced packaging and process technology, drawing more broadly on a wide range of upstream supplying industries beyond these named partners.
Its own filings show a single named customer, Apple, accounting for the great majority of its net sales in each of the last several fiscal years, with no other customer or distributor disclosed anywhere near that scale. Beyond that customer, its output reaches a narrow band of downstream device industries rather than a broad one.
A large number of other companies run the same kind of production system, one built around converting inputs at a capped physical rate, so this operating shape on its own is common rather than rare; within that shared shape, several of its profitability and return measures place it toward the upper end of the peer group. Separately, the company's own filings describe its products as combining hardware with proprietary software algorithms and a large patent portfolio, though CompanyGraph has not independently confirmed that this keeps competitors from copying its approach.
Its own filings describe sales as made mainly under short-term purchase orders that customers can revise without significant penalty, with most contracts running a short term and backlog meaningful mainly for the near term ahead. This disclosed contract structure does not itself show long-term lock-in, and whether a technical or design-integration switching cost exists on top of it is not something CompanyGraph can see in the evidence gathered.
The industry frame for semiconductor production expects a fixed physical conversion rate to be the binding limit, but Cirrus Logic contracts out its wafer fabrication and assembly rather than owning the plant that sets that rate, so its own filings instead point to access to external foundry and packaging capacity, materials availability, advanced process technology and the recruiting of specialized engineering talent as its binding limits. It states that industry-wide capacity constraints have at times limited how much of a demand increase it could satisfy, without describing itself as structurally supply or demand constrained.
The company's own filings name customer concentration in a single customer as a specific risk it discloses, alongside dependence on third-party manufacturers for all of its products, reliance on its wafer agreement with GlobalFoundries, and sensitivity to consumer-electronics and smartphone demand and to international trade policy. These are the vulnerabilities the company itself identifies first, not an independent determination by CompanyGraph.
Its own filings identify exposure to tariffs, export controls, economic sanctions and the U.S. Entity List, including certain Chinese customers or affiliates placed on that list which limits its ability to support them, alongside foreign-currency exposure tied mainly to the British pound through its U.K.-based operations. Ordinary-course legal proceedings are also disclosed, with management stating it does not expect any pending matter to materially affect the business.
Read from the company's own filings and public materials (gathered August 2026) together with figures CompanyGraph recomputed from its statements. Written August 2026. A question with no evidence behind it is left out rather than answered.
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Sign inThe reported statements, read against the company's own industry.
10 interpretations currently present — each is a set of fired observations whose alignment reads as one structural pattern. Click an observation to see the numbers behind it.
Screen for these patternsIs this company financially stable?
MRQ Cash Elevated Relative To Total Debt With EBITDA And FCF Elevated Relative To Total Liabilities
Cash covers most of its debt, with earnings high against its liabilities.
How does this company use capital?
Three Asset-Base Ratios Elevated
It gets more sales from its assets than its industry does, and a lot of profit from them too.
Cash Backing With OCF Coverage And Cash Near Total Debt
Cash on hand covers most or all of its total debt, and cash flow matches reported earnings.
Cash-Flow Ratios Elevated
More of its sales turn into cash than in its industry, and less of that cash is consumed by reinvestment than at most of its peers.
FCF Ratios Elevated
Its free cash flow is large next to assets and equity, and more of its operating cash reaches it than in its industry.
Industry-Benchmarked ROA and Margin Elevated
Returns and margins have sat in the top of its industry across five years.
Industry-Benchmarked Return on Capital Elevated
It earns more on its assets and its equity than its industry, and gets more sales from those assets.
ROE, ROA, And Operating ROA Elevated
It earns more on its equity than its industry does, and on its assets too — not on borrowing alone.
How is this stock valued?
Close Below 40W SMA With Profitability
The price sits below its 40-week average, on three profitable years and cash above profit.
Drawdown With FCF And Cash Backing
Well below its peak, with three years of positive free cash flow behind it.
An interpretation is present only while every observation it reads stays fired (score ≥ 70). It describes what the aligned readings show — never a verdict, never a prediction.
Shared structure with peers — never a ranking.
Structural observations derived from financial data, industry benchmarks, and supply chain position.
Peer Positioning
Financial Health
Supply Chain
Scale
Companies that share the same coordination system — how they create, deliver, or capture value.
Companies that share active interpretations — structural patterns currently present in both stocks.