Auto and power chips holding firm

ON Semiconductor shares closed at $83.01 on April 17, up 3.85% for the day, as investors leaned into signs that demand for the company’s auto and power chips is holding up. (finance.yahoo.com) The move followed analyst commentary circulated on April 16 and landed against a backdrop of a stock that has climbed 53.3% so far in 2026, according to Yahoo Finance pricing data. (finance.yahoo.com) (stockstotrade.com) ON Semiconductor, which brands itself as onsemi, sells chips that manage electric power, drive motors and handle sensing in cars, factory equipment and energy systems. Its product lineup includes silicon carbide power devices, power-management chips, motor-control parts and image sensors. (onsemi.com 1) (onsemi.com 2) The company’s own results in February pointed in the same direction. onsemi reported fourth-quarter 2025 revenue of $1.53 billion and said auto, industrial and artificial-intelligence data-center revenue all grew sequentially from the prior quarter. (onsemi.com 1) (onsemi.com 2) Chief executive Hassane El-Khoury said on February 9 that the company was seeing “increasing signs of stabilization” in its key markets after a long stretch of inventory corrections across the chip industry. For the first quarter of 2026, onsemi guided revenue to $1.44 billion to $1.54 billion and non-GAAP earnings to $0.56 to $0.66 a share. (onsemi.com) (nasdaq.com) That matters because onsemi is not mainly a seller of the high-profile chips used to train large artificial-intelligence models. Its strategy, as the company described it in February, is to lead in automotive, industrial and AI data-center power, which ties its fortunes to electric vehicles, factory automation and energy-efficiency upgrades as much as to headline AI spending. (onsemi.com) The company’s 2025 investor presentation put hard numbers behind that positioning. onsemi said its AI data-center revenue exceeded $250 million in 2025, while its Treo automotive platform doubled the number of products in its 2025 design-win funnel and pushed that funnel above $1 billion. (onsemi.com) Investors have also been watching cash generation and buybacks, not just end-market demand. onsemi said it produced $1.4 billion of free cash flow in 2025 and returned 100% of that annual free cash flow to shareholders through share repurchases. (onsemi.com) The next test is whether that stabilization shows up again when the company reports new quarterly numbers. Until then, Friday’s rise suggests the market is still rewarding chip suppliers tied to vehicles, motor control and power conversion rather than only the biggest AI names. (onsemi.com) (finance.yahoo.com)