How US suppliers have been hit by Huawei news

President Trump’s Executive Order and the decision to place Huawei on the US ‘Entity List’ is going to dominate the headlines over the next couple of days, but what will be the impact on US suppliers?

During the ZTE saga last year, where the firm was banned from using US components in its supply chain, several US firms faced considerable difficulty. With Huawei potentially facing the same fate, the next few days will certainly make for uncomfortable reading for some.

Although the main focus of the news has been on the Executive Order banning any Huawei components or products in US communications infrastructure, the entry onto the ‘Entity List’ should be considered as big. This is effectively the commerce version of a dirty bomb, and some might suggest it is being used to disrupt Huawei’s supply chain and dent its ability to dominate the telco vendor ecosystem.

But what is the impact of losing a major customer? What are the realities these US firms will face if the Secretary of Commerce turns down their application to work with Huawei?

Speaking to members of the financial community, it could be pretty severe.

Losing a customer which accounts for 2-3% of total revenues would be a concern but nothing major. For 5% of revenues, this is a headache, but something the spreadsheets could most likely tolerate. When you start getting to 10% the panic button needs to be hit.

A customer which accounts for 10% of total revenues is a major prize. Losing this revenue would result in a complete rethink in how the business operates, as this could effectively wipe out any profit for the year. If you are in the services industry, it isn’t as much of an issue, but when it comes to manufacturing and components, there are so many different implications.

For example, in the first instance you have to consider how this hits budgets, forecasts, resource allocation and manufacturing strategy.

Sales staff are probably the safest here, as the lost revenues will have to be replaced as soon as possible with new customers, but what about the marketing strategy? Do you want to replace the lost capacity with short-term customers (i.e. quicker) or long-term customers which may offer larger orders?

On the R&D side, does a company have dedicated resource working on projects for that customer? What will these staffers do now? Can those projects be re-orientated for another customer?

Finally, on the manufacturing side, there are all sorts of issues. How will the loss of revenue impact the resource recovery plan? How are the manufacturing facilities configured – do you have to close plants?

Another consideration is on your own supply chain and procurement strategies. When supplying products to said customer, you will have to source your own raw materials. Will the loss of this customer result in contracts with suppliers having to be re-negotiated? Will this mean quantity discounts are now impacted?

These are all the considerations when you are losing a customer worth 10-15% of total revenues. Anything above this and you would have to question whether the company can survive, or at least face a major restructure.

All share prices at the time of writing (UK: 16:20) – in comparison to market close on 15 May 2019

Looking at Qorvo, executives at semiconductor supplier might certainly have something to worry about. Huawei is features in the ‘top three’ customers for the firm, while on the most recent earnings call, the team discussed the success of Huawei’s smartphone division and in particular the ‘P’ series as a contributor towards a successful quarter. Some have suggested 11% of Qorvo revenues are dependent on Huawei.

Skyworks Solutions, another semiconductor company, has been suffering in recent years. With large parts of the business reliant on smartphone shipments, the global slowdown has been tough. The team work with Huawei on both the mobile and infrastructure side, and while it does work with many tier one firms in both segments, the market is clearly worried about a competitive field and an inability to work with one of the largest telco vendors worldwide.

Both Qorvo and Skyworks supply radiofrequency chips to Huawei, which might have an effect on the Chinese vendors ability to manufacture devices. That said, the supply chain disruption will not be anywhere near as damaging to Huawei as it was to ZTE as it has HiSilicon which manufacturers many of its components.

Xilinx is another which seems to have worn the news quite negatively. The team work with Huawei’s enterprise business unit, helping with video streaming challenges. This might be the smallest business group at Huawei, though the 5G euphoria is set to offer considerable opportunities. Xilinx share price has been recovering after a 17% drop in April, though this has proved to be another set-back.

NeoPhotonics is a company which should be seriously concerned. As a customer, Huawei accounted for more than 46% of the total revenue across 2018. The executive team is relatively open with investors regarding this fact, and this might have been factored into any decision to invest, though this is a massive loss for the business to absorb.

Lumentum is another business which is somewhat reliant on Huawei. While we were not able to nail down specific numbers, the firm supplies fiber optic components to Network Equipment Manufacturers (NEM) and considering there aren’t many of them to supply to, losing Huawei will be a headache.

At Finisar, Huawei described as one of the company’s major customers, though it has seemingly been diversifying its customer base in recent years. In 2017 and 2016, Huawei accounted for 11% and 12% of the annual total respectively, though the percentage is not listed for 2018. This is because the percentage has dipped below 10%, though we were unable to ascertain what the figure now is.

We might have to wait a few weeks to understand the full extent of the impact, and how stringently the US will enforce Huawei’s entry onto the ‘Entity List’, but we suspect there will be some very stressful meetings taking place in numerous offices throughout the US.