Lattice Semiconductor Corp (LSCC): what the price assumes

In the published model solve dated 2026-Q2, anchored at $112.76, Lattice Semiconductor Corp (LSCC) is priced for today's economics sustained for ~30.4 years. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating; individual model outputs and user-controlled scenarios are analytical inputs, not Boothcheck targets. Narrative composed 2026-06-27.

Generated: 2026-07-29 · Exported: 2026-08-01 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/LSCC

Headline

FieldValue
TickerLSCC
CompanyLattice Semiconductor Corp
Current price$112.76/sh
CompositionGreater China 52% / Japan 5% / Other Asia 10% / Americas 20% / Europe 13%

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

FieldValue
Inversion basisrevenue-multiple
EV / sales paid27.0x
Steady-state operating margin assumed28.4%
Must persist for30.4y

Solve inputs: computed at a 14.5% cost of capital; growth searched up to the 25% self-funding ceiling; each 1pp moves the implied horizon ~4.1 years.

Reconcile: at the x-ray's 9.3% required return this reads ~14.6 years; the models below use their own rates.

How unusual the bet is: elevated

ReferenceValue
vs own history+1.48σ
sustained it ~10 years at this level15%
implied end-window share0%

Valuation X-Ray

Every valuation family lands below the price. The price therefore sits beyond what those standard frames encode.

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

FamilyMedian price/FVModelsReads
Asset—0—
Earnings12.86x2expensive
Relative9.67x2expensive
Growth2.31x3expensive

Families that call it expensive: Earnings, Relative, Growth

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 9.2%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=7)

ModelFamilyFVPrice/FVApplicableMethodology
DCF Perpetual GrowthGrowth$31.673.56xyesFCF base $0.2B, growth 18% (input: historical growth), terminal g 4.0%, WACC 9.2%, 6yr projection
DCF Exit MultipleGrowth$110.031.02xyesExit EV/EBITDA: 514.6x / 516.6x / 518.6x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 6yr
Relative ValuationRelative$8.1313.87xyesP/E 48.4x (blended: static sector reference 22x + trailing (TTM) 791x), scenarios: 39.5x / 48.4x / 57.3x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 35.2x
Simple DDMGrowth——no—
Two-Stage DDMGrowth——no—
Simple Excess ReturnAsset$1.5473.22xyesBV/sh $5.31, ROE (TTM) 2.7%, ke 9.3% (excluded from median)
Two-Stage Excess ReturnAsset$0.90125.29xyes5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3% (excluded from median)
Discounted Future Market CapGrowth$48.722.31xyesRev $0.6B, growth 18% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 9.8x / 12.0x / 14.2x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 12x)
Peter Lynch Fair ValueRelative$1.6867.12xyesEPS $0.14, growth 1% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=1265.06 (Overvalued) (excluded from median)
Margin TrajectoryGrowth——no—
Earnings Power ValueEarnings$6.9316.27xyesNormalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $0.11B × (1−20%) / WACC 9.2% → EPV (no growth)
Residual IncomeAsset$0.67168.30xyesBV $5.31 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 2.7% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 1.7%/yr (excluded from median)
Graham NumberAsset$4.0927.57xyes√(22.5 × EPS $0.14 × BVPS $5.31) — Graham's conservative floor (excluded from median)
EV/EBITDA RelativeRelative$3.8629.21xyesEBITDA $0.03B × sector EV/EBITDA 16.0x (excluded from median)
FCF YieldEarnings$11.939.45xyesFCF $149.0M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity
SBC-Adj FCF YieldEarnings$2.3747.58xyesSBC-adj FCF $0.03B (FCF $0.15B − SBC $0.12B) capitalized at Kₑ (excluded from median)
Ben Graham FormulaEarnings$1.1498.91xyesEPS $0.14 × (8.5 + 2×0.6%) × (4.4 / 5.3%) (excluded from median)
ROIC-Justified P/BAsset$1.7564.43xyesBV $5.31 × (ROIC 3.0% / WACC 9.2%) (excluded from median)
P/Sales SectorRelative$20.595.48xyesRevenue $0.57B × sector P/S 5.0x
PEG Fair ValueRelative$0.70161.09xyesEPS $0.14 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 0.6% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 0.9x (excluded from median)
Earnings YieldEarnings$1.5174.68xyesEPS $0.14 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%) (excluded from median)
Funds From Operations MultipleRelative——no—
Clinical Phase NPVGrowth——no—
MertonAsset——no—
V5 Mechanical———no—

Solvency

FieldValue
Net cash$140.0m
Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax)-5.77x (net cash)
Net debt / operating income (pre-tax)-4.62x (net cash)
Share count CAGR (buyback)-0.3%
Burning cashno

Interest expense is not separately reported in the latest filings, so interest coverage cannot be computed.

Bullet Takeaways

Bull Case

The obvious knock on Lattice is that it just came through a brutal inventory correction that gutted its trailing earnings, and the stock trades at a multiple that looks absurd against those depressed numbers. That is true, and it is also the setup. The trailing weakness is the trough of a chip cycle, not the steady state, and the recovery has arrived with force. First-quarter 2026 revenue jumped 42.2% year over year to $170.9 million, and the company guided second-quarter revenue to about $185 million at the midpoint, nearly 50% year-over-year growth and well above what analysts expected. A company exiting a downturn at this slope is not the same company its trailing income statement describes.

Lattice occupies a specific and defensible niche: small and mid-range field-programmable gate arrays, the reconfigurable chips that sit in equipment where flexibility matters more than raw scale. The 10-K explains the value proposition in its own words, noting that "programmability allows our customers flexibility and reduced time to market, while allowing us to offer the chips to many different customers in many different markets", and that Lattice FPGAs offer customers "supply peace of" mind against product-obsolescence cycles. Larger programmable-logic vendors have ceded the low-power, small-footprint end of the market, and Lattice has built design-win momentum and a software ecosystem around it. Once an FPGA is designed into a product, it tends to stay through the product's life, which gives the revenue a stickiness that pure-commodity chips lack.

The forward demand drivers are concentrated where capital spending is heaviest. Management points to data-center demand lifting attach rates, with an expectation of surpassing three FPGA units per server as systems grow more complex, alongside record revenue in its compute-and-communications business and 20%-plus sequential growth in industrial and embedded. The balance sheet supports the offense: net cash of about $140 million and no debt, so the company can invest through the ramp without strain. The bull case is that the design wins accumulated during the downturn convert into a multi-year growth cycle, and the trailing trough numbers give way to the operating leverage a fabless model produces on the way up.

Bear Case

The price depends on a specific story holding: that this is the start of a durable multi-year growth cycle rather than a sharp but ordinary cyclical rebound, and the most fragile assumption is the data-center attach-rate ramp. The bull thesis leans on FPGA units per server climbing past three as artificial-intelligence infrastructure builds out, but that is a forward assumption about content gains in a market where Lattice is a small supplier competing for sockets. If the per-server attach rate plateaus, or if the AI-server build digests faster than expected, the growth rate that justifies the multiple compresses, and there is nothing in the trailing financials to catch the fall.

The valuation gap against demonstrated earnings is extreme, and that is the bear's hard arithmetic. Trailing GAAP earnings per share are about $0.14 and return on equity is in the low single digits, both depressed by the correction, but the recovery would have to be enormous and durable to grow into the price. Stock-based compensation is also heavy relative to the cash the business generates: free cash flow is about $149 million, but adjusting for roughly $120 million of stock compensation leaves true economic free cash flow far thinner. The company reports non-GAAP earnings that are far above its GAAP results, and the gap is largely that compensation expense, which dilutes shareholders even as it is added back to the adjusted figures the market tends to anchor on.

Lattice is also among the most volatile names in its sector, with a beta well above two, which means the stock amplifies both the cycle and sentiment swings. Its niche is defensible but narrow: it does not control the architecture transitions or the capital-spending cycles that drive its demand, and a larger competitor choosing to push into small and mid-range FPGAs would pressure the very segment Lattice depends on. The balance sheet is clean and solvency is not a concern. The concern is that the price embeds a best-case, multi-year, content-gain narrative, and the moment the quarterly growth rate decelerates from the current near-50% pace, the market re-rates a stock that has no earnings floor underneath it.

Valuation

No standard valuation family reaches the price, and that is the entire framing. Against trailing results the stock is rich on earnings power, peer multiples, and even forward growth, because the trailing numbers reflect a cyclical trough: GAAP earnings per share of about $0.14 and an operating margin in the low single digits. Methods anchored on those figures land in the single-digit to low-double-digit dollar range, a fraction of the price. The only honest reading is that the buyer is not paying for current earnings at all; the price is a bet on the recovery extending into a sustained, high-growth cycle.

The appropriate lens at this stage is revenue and its trajectory, and even that requires aggressive assumptions. Quarterly revenue is growing near 50% year over year off the trough, and a revenue-multiple framing can rationalize the price only if that growth persists for years and the operating margin recovers toward the high levels the business reached before the correction. The forward-growth methods get closest to the price, while the static earnings and asset methods sit far below it, which tells the buyer exactly what kind of bet this is: a durability-of-the-recovery premium that the static methods structurally cannot frame. The decisive variable is whether the data-center attach rate and design-win pipeline convert into the multi-year ramp management describes, because that, not the trailing income statement, is what the price requires.

Solvency is sound and removes any survival question, while leaving the multiple unsupported. Lattice holds about $140 million of net cash with no debt and is not burning cash. The nuance is that stock-based compensation, near $120 million, is large relative to the roughly $149 million of reported free cash flow, so the genuine, post-dilution cash generation is modest. The balance sheet ensures the company can fund its recovery comfortably, but it does nothing to justify paying a peak-of-narrative price. For this name the question is not financial health, which is fine, but whether the growth story that the entire valuation rests on proves as durable as the early-cycle quarters suggest.

Catalysts

The first-quarter 2026 report on May 4 confirmed the cyclical turn. Revenue rose 42.2% year over year to $170.9 million, ahead of expectations, with record revenue in the compute-and-communications business and industrial-and-embedded growth exceeding 20% sequentially. The company guided second-quarter revenue to about $185 million at the midpoint, nearly 50% year-over-year growth and roughly 9% above what analysts were modeling, and management framed strong backlog and design-win momentum as signs of the early stages of a multi-year growth cycle.

The forward driver management emphasizes is the data center. The company cited capital-spending growth, rising attach rates, and higher average selling prices, with an expectation of surpassing three FPGA units per server as systems grow more complex. The catalysts that matter are the quarterly revenue growth rate, since the durability of the near-50% pace is what the price assumes, and the data-center attach-rate progression, which is the specific content-gain story underneath the multi-year thesis. A sustained backlog and continued design wins would support the narrative; any sign the rebound is a one-time restock rather than a structural ramp would challenge it.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Gross margin (reported)

Methodology Note

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.

Sources

Lattice Q1 FY2026 results, May 2026 · Lattice Q1 FY2026 earnings call, May 2026

View the full interactive LSCC report on boothcheck