Energy stocks' popularity grew white hot in the wake of the pandemic, the subsequent economic reopening, and the war in Ukraine. With inventories too tight for the present demand, energy inflation became a real problem -- unless you are an energy company raking in the profits.
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Meanwhile, semiconductor companies saw soaring demand too, especially in enterprise markets as data centers supporting cloud computing and artificial intelligence become a top priority for businesses these days. But data centers gobble up massive amounts of energy, which means the energy inflation issue is a stinger for these large computing systems.
As a result, chips and energy appear to be forming the start of a new bull market for the coming years. Could there be a way for investors to profit off both soaring energy prices and enterprise demand for power-hungry semiconductors? I believe so, and Advanced Energy Industries (AEIS -1.71%) could be one way to ride the wave.
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Denver, Colorado-based Advanced Energy is a designer and manufacturer of energy conversion, measurement, and control equipment. "Mission critical" applications for its solutions include the operation of semiconductor equipment (used by chip fabricators like Intel or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing), data centers, mobile telecom, and internet service networks, and medical properties (which are highly reliant on electrical equipment operating reliably at all times, no hiccups allowed).
Through the first nine months of 2022, Advanced Energy reported that nearly 52% of its $1.35 billion in revenue came from semiconductor equipment companies (chip fab equipment makers Applied Materials and Lam Research were its two largest customers in 2021). The remaining revenue breakdown was 23% from industrial and medical companies, 17% from data centers, and nearly 9% from telecom networks.
If you're looking for a big and dominant company with a wide competitive advantage, Advanced Energy may not be the business for you. As is the case with anything related to the energy or manufacturing industries, there are a lot of players, with no single one dominating the field. Advanced Energy has a number of peers vying for similar customer attention. Most of these are other small companies, with the exception of a few larger U.S. exchange-listed stocks like ABB, Flex, and MKS Instruments.
Why Advanced Energy stock now?
With energy prices not expected to collapse anytime soon and semiconductor and enterprise computing demand on track to soar for the rest of the decade, this could be a rising tide situation for Advanced Energy and other similar stocks. At the end of 2022, management said the backlog for its components totaled more than $900 million, and that figure increased to nearly $1.1 billion as of the end of the third quarter of 2022. This is reflected in guidance for fourth-quarter 2022, in which Advanced Energy expects revenue to jump 18% year over year and earnings per share to jump 12% year over year at the midpoint of guidance.
Shares currently trade for a modest 18 times trailing 12-month earnings per share (37 times trailing 12-month free cash flow, elevated due to an acquisition earlier in 2022), and just 14 times one-year forward expected earnings per share.
A word of caution here: Advanced Energy's business is cyclical. Again, this is typical for companies in the energy and industrial space. Despite strong growth, shares of Advanced Energy have mostly flatlined over the last year. This likely reflects risk that revenue growth will ease up in 2023 due to global economic headwinds and a temporary slowdown in the chip market (driven by consumer electronics, not so much enterprise chip demand). Mind this risk. I don't think Advanced Energy is a best-buy right this moment.
However, I have a growing interest in energy, materials, and equipment suppliers to the chip industry, so I'm adding Advanced Energy to my watch list -- which includes other energy and gas equipment companies like Air Products and Chemicals and Linde. Companies at the intersection of power and chips, two industries requiring businesses to make capital-intensive investments, have a bright outlook for the 2020s. Keep Advanced Energy Industries on your radar for 2023, especially if economic storm clouds clear and a new bull market begins.
