A comparison of major computer chipset vendors in financial point of view

The goal of this master thesis is to analyze the three major chipset players in today’s Personal Computer (PC) industry, while providing recommendations in different perspectives. One of the perspectives is from the investor’s point of view to single out a company with the most long term investment value. The other is from each company’s management point of view to suggest for the areas of improvement for the companies. Two of the three companies discussed in this thesis are American-based global companies namely, Intel and AMD, while the other is a Taiwanese company: VIA Technology. Various analyses were made to evaluate each company. In the general comparison of the companies, each company’s background information, product competitiveness, SWOT analysis and market share were discussed. In the finance diagnostics for each company, financial data from 2007 to 2010 were used as the basis in revealing a company’s quality and its ability to manage different types of risks. Enterprise value (EV), which was derived from the financial report, reflects a company’s true value. And each company’s EV per share was compared against their stock prices to see whether their stock prices have been reasonable or not. In conclusion, as an investor, Intel is the best choice for long term investment because of its scale and profitability. And as of the end of 2010, Intel’s stock price was below its enterprise value per share, so there was room for its stock price to rise. In addition, from the profit model map, Intel is located very close in region A in 2010 and it shows Intel is a very well-managed and profitable company. In management point of view, Intel would need to find its place in the emerging tablet PC market, which is being dominated by ARM architecture, as opposed to the x86 architecture in which Intel specializes at. AMD needs to improve on its visibility in the market, as AMD is rarely being seen on TV commercials or magazine advertisement. Via Technology can move to a niche market in order to avoid the 99% combined market share by Intel and AMD in the consumer PC market and be profitable again