Is Texas Instruments Stock Really a "Safe" Buy-and-Hold?
Texas Instruments (NASDAQ: TXN) has been a phenomenal chip stock over the decades. The company's disciplined expansion, as well as its focus on "mature" chip manufacturing that enabled it to keep costs to a minimum, have led to sustained free-cash-flow-per-share growth -- TI's preferred metric for profitability and shareholder returns for nearly two decades.
But something has clearly changed as free cash flow per share has plummeted since peaking in 2021. Is TI really a safe "buy-and-hold" investment right now?
In the wake of the pandemic, new secular growth trends have been established for semiconductor manufacturing. Renewable power (power management chips, solar components, EVs in the auto industry) and industrial automation (factory automation, network-connected medical equipment, and retail and warehouse automation) have all turned into top investment priorities across a range of industries.
Source Fool.com
