TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED (TXN): what the price requires
At today's price, TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED (TXN) is priced for today's economics sustained for ~11.3 years. boothcheck doesn't publish a fair value or a price target; it shows what the price assumes, so you can judge whether that bar is too high.
Generated: 2026-07-14 · Exported: 2026-07-17 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/TXN
Headline
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Ticker | TXN |
| Company | TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED |
| Sector / Industry | Technology / Semiconductors |
| Current price | $300.60/sh |
| Composition | Analog 79% / Embedded Processing 15% / Other 6% |
What The Price Requires (Inversion)
The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Inversion basis | whole-company |
| Operating margin needed | 87.0% |
| Operating margin today | 35.2% |
| Margin expansion implied | +51.8pp |
| Must persist for | 11.3y |
| Multiple paid | 45x operating income |
The operating-margin requirement is derived from the framework's value band at year 12, a separately labeled basis from the headline growth/duration solve.
Solve inputs: computed at a 10.4% cost of capital; growth searched up to the 25% self-funding ceiling; each 1pp moves the implied horizon ~2.1 years.
Reconcile: at the x-ray's 9.3% required return this reads ~9 years; the models below use their own rates.
How unusual the bet is: elevated
| Reference | Value |
|---|---|
| vs own history | +0.75σ |
| cohort percentile (of 177 peers) | 74 |
| 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 requires assumptions 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 | 3.91x | 4 | expensive |
| Earnings | 4.75x | 5 | expensive |
| Relative | 2.98x | 5 | expensive |
| Growth | 1.26x | 3 | expensive |
Families that call it expensive: Asset, Earnings, Relative
The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 9.0%); the inversion above states its own rate.
Per-Model Detail (n=17)
| Model | Family | FV | Price/FV | Applicable | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DCF Perpetual Growth | Growth | $224.80 | 1.34x | yes | FCF base $8.0B, growth 15% (input: historical growth), terminal g 4.0%, WACC 9.0%, 6yr projection |
| DCF Exit Multiple | Growth | $354.45 | 0.85x | yes | Exit EV/EBITDA: 38.6x / 40.6x / 42.6x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 6yr |
| Relative Valuation | Relative | $187.63 | 1.60x | yes | P/E 30.76x (blended: static sector reference 22x + trailing (TTM) 51x), scenarios: 25.2x / 30.8x / 36.3x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 23.39x |
| Simple DDM | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Two-Stage DDM | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Simple Excess Return | Asset | $63.48 | 4.74x | yes | BV/sh $18.36, ROE (TTM) 32.0%, ke 9.3% |
| Two-Stage Excess Return | Asset | $123.40 | 2.44x | yes | 5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3% |
| Discounted Future Market Cap | Growth | $237.89 | 1.26x | yes | Rev $18.4B, growth 15% (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 Value | Relative | $70.20 | 4.28x | yes | EPS $5.85, growth 11% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=4.53 (Overvalued) |
| Margin Trajectory | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Earnings Power Value | Earnings | $70.05 | 4.29x | yes | Normalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $7.56B × (1−10%) / WACC 9.0% → EPV (no growth) |
| Residual Income | Asset | $97.72 | 3.08x | yes | BV $18.36 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 32.0% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 8.8%/yr |
| Graham Number | Asset | $49.15 | 6.12x | yes | √(22.5 × EPS $5.85 × BVPS $18.36) — Graham's conservative floor |
| EV/EBITDA Relative | Relative | $110.63 | 2.72x | yes | EBITDA $7.05B × sector EV/EBITDA 16.0x |
| FCF Yield | Earnings | $31.27 | 9.61x | yes | FCF $3721.0M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity |
| SBC-Adj FCF Yield | Earnings | $26.39 | 11.39x | yes | SBC-adj FCF $3.31B (FCF $3.72B − SBC $0.41B) capitalized at Kₑ |
| Ben Graham Formula | Earnings | $152.51 | 1.97x | yes | EPS $5.85 × (8.5 + 2×11.3%) × (4.4 / 5.3%) |
| ROIC-Justified P/B | Asset | $11.69 | 25.71x | yes | BV $18.36 × (ROIC 5.7% / WACC 9.0%) (excluded from median) |
| P/Sales Sector | Relative | $100.86 | 2.98x | yes | Revenue $18.44B × sector P/S 5.0x |
| PEG Fair Value | Relative | $99.19 | 3.03x | yes | EPS $5.85 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 11.3% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 17.0x |
| Earnings Yield | Earnings | $63.24 | 4.75x | yes | EPS $5.85 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%) |
| Funds From Operations Multiple | Relative | — | — | no | — |
| Clinical Phase NPV | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Merton | Asset | — | — | no | — |
| V5 Mechanical | — | — | — | no | — |
Solvency
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Net debt | $8.9b |
| Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax) | 1.56x |
| Net debt / operating income (pre-tax) | 1.41x |
| Share count CAGR (buyback) | -0.5% |
| Burning cash | no |
Interest expense is not separately reported in the latest filings, so interest coverage cannot be computed.
Bullet Takeaways
- Texas Instruments makes analog and embedded chips, the unglamorous components inside nearly every electronic device, and it just came off the bottom of a cyclical downturn: Q1 2026 revenue rose 19% year over year with industrial up about 30% and data center up about 90%.
- The chief risk is macro and geographic: products shipped into China represented about 50% of TI's revenue in 2025 per the 10-K (accession 0000097476-26-000059), so trade policy and Chinese industrial demand swing the results more than any single product decision.
- Watch the July 22 Q2 report against guidance of $5.0 to $5.4 billion revenue, and the capex cliff, with a six-year, $20B-plus fab buildout ending and 2026 capex guided down to $2 to $3 billion, which is what turns TI's cash flow from constrained to abundant.
Bull Case
Read TI as a cyclical business at the point in its cycle where two things turn up at once: demand and free cash flow. The demand recovery is already on the tape. Revenue grew 19% year over year and 9% sequentially in the first quarter of 2026, led by industrial up roughly 30% and data center up roughly 90%, with gross margin expanding to 58% and Q2 guidance pointing to the low-to-mid 59% range as 300mm factory utilization climbs. For an analog company whose margins are dominated by how full its factories run, rising utilization off a trough is the whole earnings-leverage story. The 10-K names the structural edge behind it: manufacturing that "provides lower costs and greater control of our supply chain" and "a broad portfolio of analog and embedded processing products that offers more opportunity per customer" (accession 0000097476-26-000059).
The second turn is the capex cliff, and it is the more underappreciated one. TI spent six years and more than $20 billion building 300mm capacity, and that program is now concluding, with 2026 capital spending guided down to $2 to $3 billion. Trailing free cash flow already rose to about $4.4 billion at the end of the first quarter from $1.7 billion a year earlier. When a heavy building phase ends while revenue is rising, free cash flow does not improve gradually; it steps up, because the same factory base now serves more demand at far lower incremental cost. TI owns that fresh, largely-paid-for 300mm base in the U.S. at exactly the moment demand for domestically-made analog chips is prized.
The franchise durability justifies treating the recovery as more than a bounce. The analog and embedded markets are, in TI's own words, "highly" fragmented and competitive despite consolidation (same accession), which sounds like a negative but is why no single competitor can take TI's tens of thousands of catalog parts embedded across decades of customer designs. Return on equity runs 32%, the balance sheet scores near the top of the solvency scale, and the company returned about $6 billion over the trailing year in dividends and buybacks while shares shrank. The dividend has grown for two decades. The bull case is a best-in-class cyclical catching an up-cycle just as its investment phase ends, with the cash flow inflection still ahead.
Bear Case
The variable with the most leverage over this thesis is one TI does not control: Chinese demand and the trade rules around it. The 10-K states that products shipped into China represented about 50% of TI's revenue in 2025, with customers headquartered in China at about 20% (accession 0000097476-26-000059). That is enormous concentration in a single market that is simultaneously TI's largest customer, its most aggressive domestic-competitor incubator, and the focus of escalating semiconductor trade restrictions. A tariff round, an export-control tightening, or a push by Beijing toward home-grown analog suppliers does not trim TI's growth at the margin; it strikes half the revenue base. The current up-cycle is being priced as clean secular growth, but a business with this China exposure carries a policy tail the multiple is not dwelling on.
The cyclicality itself is the second problem, and the price treats a peak as a plateau. TI's own risk language ties its profitability to "our ability to utilize our manufacturing facilities at sufficient levels to cover our fixed operating costs, in an intensely competitive and cyclical industry" (same accession). The margins expanding today on rising utilization are the same margins that compressed on the way down, and the recent 19% year-over-year growth is a recovery off a depressed base, not a new run-rate. The just-completed $20 billion capacity buildout adds fixed costs that punish the next downturn harder: more factory to keep full when demand next rolls over. Analog demand is broad but not immune, and the filing warns that a decline in "one or more sectors within our markets" can materially hurt results.
The valuation is where the bear case sharpens to a point. At about 46 times company-wide operating income, the price embeds growth held near the fastest pace the business can self-fund for roughly 12 years, a multiple the framework places at the very top of the semiconductor peer distribution, well beyond the upper quartile. Not one valuation family reaches the price: asset value reads it at about 5 times, earnings power at about 6 times, and even the forward-growth lens at 1.5 times what it supports. On a 53 times trailing earnings multiple against a sector median of 22, TI is priced like a secular grower rather than the elite cyclical it is. The dividend, at a 96.7% payout of net income, also leaves little room, since a cyclical dividend covered 96 cents on the dollar of earnings is fully exposed if the next trough arrives before free cash flow fully inflects. The bear case is not that TI is a weak company; it is that the market is paying a peak-cycle, secular-growth price for a China-exposed cyclical.
Valuation
At $311.49 (July 11, 2026), Texas Instruments trades at about 46 times company-wide operating income, which embeds operating growth held near the company's self-funding ceiling for roughly 12 years. The recent pace supports the rate, revenue grew 19% year over year last quarter, but the framework flags the assumption as high, a demanding bet on continued execution, and places the multiple at the very top of the semiconductor peer distribution, well beyond the upper quartile. The most useful way to read that is against TI's nature: this is an elite cyclical, and a cyclical priced at the top of the cycle is paying for the recovery to keep running with no interruption, which the base rate does not favor, since only about 15% of comparable fast-growers sustained such a pace even ten years.
Every valuation family agrees the price sits above what it supports, which is the signal rather than a contradiction. The asset-value lens reads the price at about 5 times, earnings power at about 6 times, the peer-multiple lens at about 3 times, and even the forward-growth projection at 1.5 times what it justifies. The stock's 53 times trailing earnings against a semiconductor-sector median of 22, and 42 times EV/EBITDA against a 16 median, is the concrete version of that gap. The one method that comes closest is the exit-multiple cash-flow projection, and it gets there only by holding today's roughly 42 times EV/EBITDA multiple flat for the life of the forecast, which is the assumption in question, not the answer. The filing-sourced foundation is genuinely strong, TI's manufacturing edge that "provides lower costs and greater control of our supply chain" (accession 0000097476-26-000059) is real, but a strong franchise and a stretched price are different questions.
Solvency is not a concern: leverage is moderate and well covered, the current ratio is 4.46, and return on equity runs 32%. Two numbers need their bases stated to stay coherent. The dividend is $5.68 per share on the current annualized rate, a 1.8% yield, but it consumes 96.7% of trailing net income, so its comfort depends on the free-cash-flow inflection as capex falls, not on current earnings coverage. And the trailing free cash flow of $3.72 billion, an FCF yield near 1.3% on the market cap, is depressed by the tail of the $20 billion buildout; the bull's cash-flow step-up is real but has not yet fully arrived. What the buyer at $311.49 is underwriting is that a China-exposed, peak-cycle analog leader keeps compounding at top-of-peer rates for over a decade; the methods are unanimous that the price already banks that outcome.
Catalysts
The April 22 first-quarter report was a beat-and-raise that confirmed the cyclical upturn. Revenue of $4.83 billion came in above the top of guidance, up 19% year over year and 9% sequentially, with net income of $1.55 billion and EPS of $1.68, led by industrial up about 30% and data center up about 90%. Gross margin expanded to 58%, and TI guided Q2 2026 revenue to $5.0 to $5.4 billion and EPS to $1.77 to $2.05, a midpoint roughly 8% above the quarter and slightly ahead of normal seasonality, with gross margin guided toward the low-to-mid 59% range as 300mm utilization builds. The company also guided 2026 capex down to $2 to $3 billion, marking the end of the multi-year buildout.
The forward calendar centers on the July 22 second-quarter report, which will test whether the industrial and data-center momentum holds and whether the margin step-up lands as guided. A management change is underway: Julie Knecht was named CFO with Rafael Lizardi retiring in August 2026. Analyst sentiment turned notably more bullish through June and July, with BofA raising its target to $370 from $320, UBS to $350 from $295, Stifel to $360 from $340, and Cantor Fitzgerald to $340 from $300, even as the broader covering consensus mean sat closer to $294 to $298. That spread, sharply higher individual targets against a more cautious mean, captures the debate exactly: the bulls are pricing the free-cash-flow inflection as capex falls, while the mean still reflects the peak-cycle valuation and the China-exposure risk.
Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)
Analog (reported)
- ADI (ANALOG DEVICES INC)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- MPWR (MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS INC)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- MCHP (MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY INCORPORATED)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- NXPI (NXP Semiconductors N.V.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- ON (ON Semiconductor Corporation)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- QRVO (Qorvo, Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- SWKS (SKYWORKS SOLUTIONS, INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
Embedded Processing (reported)
- MCHP (MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY INCORPORATED)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- NXPI (NXP Semiconductors N.V.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- ADI (ANALOG DEVICES INC)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- STM (STMicroelectronics N.V.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- ON (ON Semiconductor Corporation)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- SLAB (SILICON LABORATORIES INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
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.
- 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
Q1 2026 earnings release, April 2026 · company guidance, April 2026 · Q1 2026 results, April 2026 · Q2 2026 guidance, April 2026 · company announcement, 2026 · analyst research notes, June-July 2026