IMPINJ, INC. (PI): what the price assumes

Generated: 2026-08-08 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/PI

Headline

Field	Value
Ticker	PI
Company	IMPINJ, INC.
Sector / Industry	Technology
Current price	$163.22/sh
Composition	Endpoint ICs 83% / Systems 17%

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

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

Field	Value
Inversion basis	revenue-multiple
EV / sales paid	14.0x
Steady-state operating margin assumed	21.0%
Must persist for	22.4y

The company earns no operating profit yet; the inversion runs on the revenue multiple and an assumed steady-state margin.

Solve inputs: computed at a 13.3% cost of capital; growth searched up to the 25% self-funding ceiling; each 1pp moves the implied horizon ~3.1 years.

Reconcile: at the x-ray's 9.3% required return this reads ~12 years; the models below use their own rates.

How unusual the bet is: elevated

Reference	Value
vs own history	+0.66σ
sustained it ~10 years at this level	15%
implied end-window share	0%

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.

Family	Median price/FV	Models	Reads
Asset	—	0	—
Earnings	12.78x	1	expensive
Relative	2.72x	2	expensive
Growth	3.03x	3	expensive

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 8.7%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=6)

Model	Family	FV	Price/FV	Applicable	Methodology
DCF Perpetual Growth	Growth	$21.63	7.55x	yes	FCF base $0.1B, growth 3% (input: historical growth), terminal g 3.2%, WACC 8.7%, 5yr projection
DCF Exit Multiple	Growth	$98.80	1.65x	yes	Exit EV/EBITDA: 471.8x / 473.8x / 475.8x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 5yr
Relative Valuation	Relative	$59.91	2.72x	yes	P/S fallback (negative EPS): Sector P/S 5.0x × TTM revenue — excluded from consensus
Simple DDM	Growth	—	—	no	—
Two-Stage DDM	Growth	—	—	no	—
Simple Excess Return	Asset	$7.47	21.85x	yes	Reference only (book value floor): BV/sh $7.47, ROE negative (excluded from median)
Two-Stage Excess Return	Asset	$6.72	24.29x	yes	Reference only (book value with convergence): BV/sh $7.47, ROE converges to ke (excluded from median)
Discounted Future Market Cap	Growth	$53.83	3.03x	yes	Rev $0.4B, growth 3% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 6.7x / 8.0x / 9.3x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 8x)
Peter Lynch Fair Value	Relative	$0.00	—	no	Negative/zero EPS — earnings-based value floored at $0
Margin Trajectory	Growth	—	—	no	—
Earnings Power Value	Earnings	—	—	no	—
Residual Income	Asset	—	—	no	—
Graham Number	Asset	—	—	no	—
EV/EBITDA Relative	Relative	$0.01	16321.50x	yes	EBITDA $0.01B × sector EV/EBITDA 16.0x (excluded from median)
FCF Yield	Earnings	$12.77	12.78x	yes	FCF $63.0M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity
SBC-Adj FCF Yield	Earnings	$0.01	16321.50x	yes	SBC-adj FCF $0.00B (FCF $0.06B − SBC $0.06B) capitalized at Kₑ (excluded from median)
Ben Graham Formula	Earnings	—	—	no	—
ROIC-Justified P/B	Asset	$1.38	118.27x	yes	BV $7.47 × (ROIC 1.6% / WACC 8.7%) (excluded from median)
P/Sales Sector	Relative	$59.91	2.72x	yes	Revenue $0.37B × sector P/S 5.0x
PEG Fair Value	Relative	—	—	no	—
Earnings Yield	Earnings	—	—	no	—
Funds From Operations Multiple	Relative	—	—	no	—
Clinical Phase NPV	Growth	—	—	no	—
Merton	Asset	—	—	no	—
V5 Mechanical	—	—	—	no	—

Economic-Unit Decomposition (Sum Of The Parts)

Only one reportable economic unit is present in the current topology source. Consolidated operating lenses remain available, but there is no multi-unit decomposition.

Unit	Role	Valuation basis	Revenue	Reported profit	Value evidence	Status
Impinj (consolidated)	operating	enterprise	0.4B reported-currency	—	withheld	unresolved no unit value

No total common-equity value is stated. One or more material units lack a supported unit value. The displayed values are an indicative subtotal; consolidated debt and cash cannot be applied to a fraction of the company.

Solvency

Field	Value
Net debt	$108.9m
Interest coverage	-2.0x
Share count CAGR (dilution)	5.1%
Burning cash	no

Operating profit is negative or near zero and the company has no demonstrated through-cycle (mid-cycle) operating margin to normalize against, so years-to-repay cannot be computed honestly.

Bullet Takeaways

• Endpoint ICs are 83% of what Impinj books, and the FY2025 10-K reports that "From 2010 to 2025, our overall endpoint IC sales volumes increased at a 26% compounded annual growth rate", which describes a business that grows by shipping more units at falling prices rather than by charging more for them.
• The four quarters through June 2026 produced no operating profit on 371.5 million dollars of revenue, so the shares are valued against sales, and the 16.3 million dollars of stock compensation booked in the June quarter alone exceeded that quarter's reported profit.
• September-quarter guidance calls for revenue of 105.5 to 108.5 million dollars with GAAP net income of 2.2 to 3.7 million, against 12.2 million reported in June.

Bull Case

Between 2010 and 2025 the number of Impinj chips going into the world compounded at 26% a year. Revenue did nothing of the sort. The 2025 top line landed slightly below 2024, and the four quarters through June 2026 close on an operating loss. Both facts hold at once, and the space between them is the whole business.

An endpoint IC is the small piece of silicon printed into an inlay, which a manufacturer then laminates into an apparel tag, a luggage label or a carton sticker. The FY2025 10-K describes these chips as "consumable silicon and are a reoccurring revenue source for us". That is the plain version of the economics. The tag leaves the building with the box, and the next box needs another one. Volume compounds because consumption compounds, and the company states the volume record directly: "From 2010 to 2025, our overall endpoint IC sales volumes increased at a 26% compounded annual growth rate". Price per unit is the part that does not hold, because prices are renegotiated with the large endpoint customers every year. The bull argument is that a business shaped this way eventually gets paid on scale instead of on price.

The June quarter is what that looks like when volume cooperates. Revenue reached 108.4 million dollars, gross margin came in at 58.6%, and the company reported net income of 12.2 million dollars, each a quarterly record on its own measures. Operations generated 35.6 million dollars across the first half of the year. One half-year is not a trend. It is, though, the shape of the leverage: an extra chip costs wafer and test, and most of what sits above that falls through to the operating line.

The platform is wider than the chip. As the 10-K puts it, "Our systems comprise our finished readers, reader ICs; software and services; and tag production systems", and those systems are what let a retailer read an entire carton at a doorway rather than one label at a time. Selling the reading infrastructure is how a chip supplier makes the chips get used. Competition is real but partial. The same filing notes that "Each of our competitors competes with some, but not all, of our products", naming NXP, Alien Technology and several Chinese suppliers on the endpoint side.

Whether the operating margin ever arrives is the entire question, and the cohort establishes that it exists in this industry. CRUS earns a 23.0% operating margin on just under two billion dollars of revenue. MTSI earns 16.0% on about 1.07 billion. LSCC holds a 68.4% gross margin on a base close to Impinj's own. These are different mixes serving different end markets, but together they show that a fabless design house at scale does convert gross margin into operating margin. Impinj's gross margin already sits inside that band. Its operating expense does not.

So the bull case does not require a new market to appear. It requires the existing one to keep consuming tags while the cost side stops growing alongside them.

Bear Case

Across the four quarters through June 2026, Impinj earned no operating profit. Not a thin one. None. Revenue of 371.5 million dollars produced a small operating loss, and the equity carries a market value of about 5.1 billion dollars. Everything that value is paying for therefore sits in front of the company rather than behind it.

Where the profit goes is not a mystery. Stock compensation ran 16.3 million dollars in the June quarter and 31.0 million across the first half, against 12.2 million of reported net income in June and a loss over the six months. Staff are being paid in shares, the count of those shares has compounded at about 5% a year since mid-2022, and the existing holder funds it. Management's adjusted measures remove that expense. The share count does not.

What the price requires is specific. Valued against sales at about 14 times, it needs the business to reach roughly a 21% operating margin and to grow revenue at its self-funding limit for better than two decades. Impinj has never posted a 21% operating margin. Its strongest recent quarter, the three months to June 2026, still converted less than a tenth of revenue into operating profit, and it did so on a mix and a volume the company itself calls uneven.

The 10-K names the mechanism that keeps pulling the margin back. On price: "ASPs can decline quickly for a number of reasons such as demand for older products declining, competition increasing, or during times of oversupply or overcapacity". On competition, the same filing warns that "the Chinese government has made developing the Chinese semiconductor industry a priority, potentially increasing competition for us globally while possibly restricting our ability to participate in the Chinese market". A commodity chip sold into a market where a state has declared the category strategic is not a setting in which pricing power improves.

The systems half of the revenue arrives in projects, and projects do not repeat on schedule. The company gives its own example: "we generated 14% of total 2019 revenue from a gateway deployment at a large North American SC&L provider", with nothing comparable in the year that followed. On the endpoint half, the reset is annual. The 10-K states that the yearly negotiation "typically resulted in reduced revenue and gross margins in the first quarter compared to prior periods". March 2025 and March 2026 both landed in operating loss, and March 2026 did it on revenue that was flat against the year before. The pattern is working exactly as described, which is the problem: the design puts a hole in the start of every year, and the rest of the year has to fill it before anything accrues to the owner.

The balance sheet is not the fragile part here. Impinj held more in short-dated and long-dated investments than the 241.9 million dollars of convertible notes it carries, and the first half funded itself from operations. The company can afford to wait for the market to arrive. The bear case is that the price cannot.

Valuation

None of the standard ways of valuing a company reaches this price. Peer-multiple methods come closest, and the price still sits roughly 2.7 times above where that family lands. The forward-growth family, which credits future expansion, leaves the price about 3 times above it. Capitalize the free cash flow the business generates today at no growth at all, the earnings-power view, and the price stands nearly thirteen times above that reading. Against book value the distance is wider than twenty times. The families are not arguing with each other about what the company is worth. They agree, and today's price is describing something other than today's company.

What that distance buys is a particular future. Valued against sales at about 14 times, the price implies the business eventually earns roughly a 21% operating margin and grows revenue at its self-funding ceiling for better than two decades. Those figures are approximate and should be read that way. They come from a single solve under fixed assumptions about the cost of capital and the rate at which growth fades, and they move meaningfully when those assumptions move.

Two references frame how unusual the assumption is. Measured against Impinj's own record, the near-term growth rate is inside what the company has recently delivered; the stretch is in how long it has to persist, not how fast it has to run. Measured against the wider record, only about 15% of comparably fast-growing companies held that pace even a decade. That is a narrow evidentiary base for the judgment, and a narrow base makes the reading weaker rather than gentler.

The concrete version of the demand is a 21% operating margin against a trailing year that delivered none. The cohort says the number is reachable in this industry: CRUS earns 23.0% on just under two billion dollars of revenue, and MTSI earns 16.0% on about 1.07 billion. Both are larger, and both sell into end markets Impinj does not serve. Impinj's gross margin in the June quarter is competitive with either of them, which places the entire distance in operating expense. Closing it means revenue growing much faster than headcount and the stock compensation attached to it.

Solvency is not what bounds the downside here. At the end of June the company held more in investments than the 241.9 million dollars of convertible notes on its books, and operations covered themselves through the first half. The live cost is dilution rather than leverage: the share count has compounded at about 5% a year since mid-2022, and each additional year of waiting adds another turn of it. Units have compounded since 2010. Profit has not followed them yet.

Catalysts

Impinj reported June-quarter results on July 29, 2026: revenue of 108.4 million dollars, GAAP gross margin of 58.6%, and net income of 12.2 million dollars, each a record on the company's own measures. The figure worth holding onto is the guide that came attached to it.

For the September quarter the company guided revenue of 105.5 to 108.5 million dollars, GAAP net income of 2.2 to 3.7 million, and GAAP diluted earnings of 0.07 to 0.12 per share. Revenue therefore holds roughly flat while reported profit gives back most of its June level. The company's own reconciliation of that outlook forecasts 16.4 million dollars of stock compensation for the quarter, which accounts for essentially the whole gap. That is a compensation-driven step rather than a demand signal, and it is the clearest recent illustration of why the reported and adjusted versions of this company look so different.

The other date that matters is not announced as an event. Endpoint IC prices are renegotiated annually with an effective date in the first quarter, and the 10-K says that negotiation has typically reduced first-quarter revenue and gross margin before both normalise later in the year. March 2025 and March 2026 both landed in operating loss. Whatever the September and December quarters produce, the March 2027 print will be read against that pattern.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Impinj (consolidated) (reported)

• SLAB (SILICON LABORATORIES INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …those annual reporting periods. Entities may apply the guidance using a prospective, retrospective or modified transition approach. Early adoption is permitted as of the beginning of an annual reporting period. The Company is currently evaluating the effect of this new guidance on its consolidated financial…
• FY2025 10-K: …price reductions after purchasing the product from the Company and such reductions are often significant. These negotiated price discounts are not granted until the distributor sells the product to the end customer, which may occur after the distributor has paid the original invoice amount to the Company. Payment of…
• SYNA (SYNAPTICS INCORPORATED)
• FY2025 10-K: …over the Company's acquisition-date valuation processes, including controls related to the development of the key assumptions. We evaluated the reasonableness of the Company's 33 Table o f Con tents forecasted revenue assumptions by comparing to historical actual results of the acquired assets and certain peer and…
• FY2025 10-K: PR&D from our December 2021 acquisition of DSP Group, Inc. ("DSPG"). We recorded the impairment charge as a result of a lack of commitment from certain key customers, no anticipated customer migration to the IPR&D technologies acquired from DSPG and no further development or investment planned for this project. The…
• MXL (MaxLinear, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …under which we entered into a senior secured term B loan facility and a revolving credit facility, permits us to request incremental loans in an aggregate principal amount not to exceed the sum of an amount equal to the greater of (x) $175.0 million and (y) 100% of "Consolidated EBITDA" (as defined in such…
• FY2025 10-K: …in the form of units of products which are included in accrued expenses and other current liabilities in the consolidated balance sheets. Other obligations to customers, which are included in accrued price protection liability in the consolidated balance sheets, consist of estimates of price protection rights offered…
• CRUS (Cirrus Logic, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …loss. See Note 5 - Derivative Financial Instruments for additional information related to our hedging activities. 37 Table of Contents ITEM 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data Index to Consolidated Financial Statements Reports of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm (PCAOB ID: 42 ) 39 Consolidated…
• FY2025 10-K: Association, as administrative agent. The Amendment updates the benchmark interest rate provisions to replace the London interbank offered rate ("LIBOR") with the forward-looking secured overnight financing rate ("Term SOFR"), for the purposes of calculating interest under the terms of the Second Amended Credit…
• SMTC (SEMTECH CORP)
• FY2025 10-K: …Fiscal years 2025, 2024 and 2023 each consisted of 52 weeks. Certain reclassifications within the Consolidated Statements of Operations have been made to prior period amounts to conform to current period presentation, with no impact to the Company's gross profit, operating income, net income or earnings per share for…
• FY2025 10-K: …on or around October 31, 2023, (ii) 10.27 to 1.00 for the fiscal quarter ending on or around January 31, 2024, (iii) 10.21 to 1.00 for the fiscal quarter ending on or around April 30, 2024, (iv) 9.93 to 1.00 for the fiscal quarter ending on or around July 31, 2024, (v) 8.42 to 1.00 for the fiscal quarter ending on or…
• MTSI (MACOM Technology Solutions Holdings, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …Statements of Operations 41 Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive ( L oss) Income 42 Consolidated Statements of Stockholders' Equity 43 Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows 44 Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements 45 37 REPORT OF INDEPENDENT REGISTERED PUBLIC ACCOUNTING FIRM To the stockholders and the Board…
• FY2025 10-K: COM Technology Solutions Holdings, Inc., dated October 27, 2017 (incorporated by reference to Exhibit 2.1 to our Current Report on Form 8-K filed on October 27, 2017). 2.2 Asset Purchase and Intellectual Property License Agreement, dated as of April 30, 2018, by and among CIG Shanghai Co., Ltd., MACOM Japan Limited…
• ALGM (ALLEGRO MICROSYSTEMS, INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …long-term liabilities in the consolidated balance sheets, for tax-related uncertainties based on estimates of whether, and the extent to which, additional taxes will be due. These liabilities are established when the Company believes that certain positions might be challenged despite the Company's belief that the tax…
• FY2025 10-K: …Public Accounting Firm To the Board of Directors and Stockholders of Allegro MicroSystems, Inc. Opinions on the Financial Statements and Internal Control over Financial Reporting We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheets of Allegro MicroSystems, Inc. and its subsidiaries (the "Company") as of March…
• LSCC (Lattice Semiconductor Corp)
• FY2025 10-K: …capital and general corporate purposes as appropriate. At our option, the revolving loans accrue interest at a per annum rate based on ranges determined by our consolidated total leverage ratio of either (i) the base rate (as defined in the 2022 Credit Agreement) plus a margin ranging from 0.25 % to 1.00 %, or (ii)…
• FY2025 10-K: …its Chief Executive Officer. As of January 3, 2026, we have determined that the Company operates in a single operating and reportable segment: the core Lattice business, which includes silicon-based and silicon-enabling products, evaluation boards, development hardware, and related intellectual property licensing,…

Methodology Note

• Priced-in inversion: the valuation is inverted on the current price to recover the operating-income growth, duration, and steady-state margin the price embeds (ROE for financials, FFO growth for REITs).
• Valuation x-ray: the valuation models, grouped into four families (asset, earnings, relative, growth). Each model is expressed as a price/FV ratio (distance from price), not a point fair-value estimate. The spread across families is the disagreement.
• Economic-unit decomposition (SOTP): each disclosed business unit is assigned its native valuation basis before any multiple is applied. Operating units are valued on enterprise value; funded financial units are valued on their own common equity, because their borrowings fund earning assets rather than levering the parent. A company total is stated only once every material unit carries a supported value and the parent capital bridge reconciles.
• Solvency: net cash/debt, net-debt-to-NOPAT, interest coverage, and share-count CAGR from EDGAR financials (net debt / FFO and fixed-charge coverage for REITs; regulatory-capital framing for financials).
• Peer cohorts: per-segment comparables with deep-linkable SEC filing citations.

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

Q2 2026 results release, July 29, 2026 · Q3 2026 outlook, Q2 2026 results release, July 29, 2026 · Q3 2026 outlook reconciliation, July 29, 2026 · FY2025 Form 10-K, filed February 9, 2026