By Nate Wolf

Texas Instruments stock headed lower after the company's finance boss confirmed customers likely sped up orders earlier this year in an effort to beat tariffs.

Texas Instruments, which makes analog and embedded semiconductors, as opposed to the artificial-intelligence chips produced by Nvidia, saw an acceleration in orders in April. But that surge was in large part due to a "pull-in" of demand after President Donald Trump announced sweeping levies on imports, said Chief Financial Officer Rafael Lizardi at a Citi investor conference Thursday.

"Our sense is that the orders in April had a high component of pull-ins because of the Liberation Day and the uncertainty going on there," Lizardi said. "And since then, there has been a digestion of that. How long that lasts, I don't know."

The shares were down 4.6% near midday, leaving the stock in the red for 2025.

Wall Street has been hoping for a comeback in the analog semiconductor industry, where revenue has fallen roughly 25% from its peak, Cantor Fitzgerald estimated in June. Texas Instruments' earnings and revenue for each of its first two quarters this year were better than expected, but Lizardi's comments raise questions about the outlook for the resurgence.

Tariff effects are difficult to tease out because "there's also a recovery happening at the same time," Mike Beckman, Texas Instruments' head of investor relations, said Thursday. "So how much of each of the components are playing a role?"

This isn't the first time top executives have called out a potential unusual spike in demand. On the company's second-quarter earnings call in July, CEO Haviv Ilan said it was fair to assume that customers with low semiconductor inventories would want to beef up their reserves due to the possibility of tariffs.

"[Demand] has normalized through the quarter, and we are kind of back to, right now, what drives our day-to-day is just a cyclical recovery," Ilan said at the time. The chief executive will speak at a Goldman Sachs investor conference on Wednesday.

For now, Texas Instruments' message to investors is that a broad-based recovery in demand -- aside from in the automotive sector -- is under way, but that it will take time to understand the full effects of tariffs. The company is expected to report its third-quarter earnings and comment on the outlook for the fourth quarter in October.

Write to Nate Wolf at nate.wolf@barrons.com

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September 04, 2025 12:37 ET (16:37 GMT)

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