Eighty Thousand ProductsWide moat
Texas Instruments (TXN) — moat facet
Eighty thousand parts is not a product line; it is a library, and the defence is that no single volume justifies building a second one.
Eighty thousand products is not a product line. It is a reference library, and the reason to have one is that nobody can assemble it quickly.
TI's catalogue includes more than 80,000 parts — amplifiers, data converters, interface products, motor drivers, clocks, sensing products, power management, and the embedded processors that run small dedicated tasks.1 Individually most of them are unremarkable and cheap. Collectively they are the reason an engineer designing a piece of industrial equipment can specify TI for the whole board rather than sourcing eleven components from six suppliers.
The economics of assembling such a catalogue are what protect it. Each individual part earns too little to justify a competitor developing it alone, so a rival has to want the whole library, which means decades of accumulated development against an incumbent already amortised. That is a genuine barrier and it does not require any part to be technically special.
It is reinforced by product life. Analog parts stay in production for decades — an industrial controller or an automotive module designed around a TI amplifier in 2015 is still buying it in 2030, because requalifying a board is expensive and the part costs a dollar. That produces revenue that behaves nothing like the eighteen-month cycles elsewhere in semiconductors.
The catalogue also determines where TI is strong. Industrial and automotive are 33% of revenue each, and both are markets where breadth and longevity matter more than performance.2 Personal electronics is 21% and behaves quite differently — shorter cycles, harder pricing.
The limit is that a broad catalogue of undifferentiated parts is a broad catalogue of parts that can be second-sourced one at a time, which is exactly what Chinese analog manufacturers have been doing from the commodity end upward.
The measure is Analog operating margin, which was 38.6% in 2025 — the number that would fall first if the catalogue stopped commanding a premium.3
More than 80,000 products, accumulated over decades. The catalogue neither grows nor shrinks materially in a year, and nobody is assembling a second one.
The second segment of the catalogue; growth well below Analog's for long would mean the breadth is really one business.
- ReportedTI's catalogue includes more than 80,000 parts — amplifiers, data converters, interface products, motor drivers, clocks, sensing products, power management, and the embedded processors that run small dedicated tasks.Texas Instruments Incorporated, Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025 (SEC, CIK 97476) — Item 1, Business. TI's two reportable segments are Analog and Embedded Processing, with remaining activities in Other; operations began in 1930 and it has design, manufacturing or sales operations in more than 30 countries. The product portfolio includes more than 80,000 products. TI states four sustainable competitive advantages: a strong foundation of manufacturing and technology, a broad portfolio of analog and embedded processing products, the reach of its market channels, and the diversity and longevity of its products, markets and customer positions, which in combination it describes as difficult to replicate. An unpackaged chip built on a 300mm wafer costs about 40% less than one built on a 200mm wafer; TI continued qualifying and ramping production at its newest 300mm fabs in Richardson and Sherman, Texas, and Lehi, Utah, supporting external foundry transfers and internal transfers from its legacy 150mm facilities, and expects to maintain sufficient internal capacity to meet the majority of its production needs, offering customers geopolitically dependable capacity. TI sells to over 100,000 customers, with about half of revenue derived from customers outside its largest 50; more than 80% of revenue was direct in 2025, including TI.com. End markets as a percentage of 2025 revenue: industrial 33%, automotive 33%, personal electronics 21%, data centre 9%, communications equipment 3%, and calculators about 1%. About 60% of revenue comes from customers headquartered outside the United States; revenue from end customers headquartered in China represented about 20% of revenue in 2025, while revenue from products shipped into China represented about 50%. The analog and embedded processing markets remain highly fragmented, with significant global competition from dozens of large and small companies including emerging companies, particularly in Asia. The company's stated objective is the growth of free cash flow per share over the long term. — FY2025 · publ. 2026-02-06 · source ↗
- ReportedIndustrial and automotive are 33% of revenue each, and both are markets where breadth and longevity matter more than performance.Texas Instruments Incorporated, Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025 (SEC, CIK 97476) — Item 1, Business. TI's two reportable segments are Analog and Embedded Processing, with remaining activities in Other; operations began in 1930 and it has design, manufacturing or sales operations in more than 30 countries. The product portfolio includes more than 80,000 products. TI states four sustainable competitive advantages: a strong foundation of manufacturing and technology, a broad portfolio of analog and embedded processing products, the reach of its market channels, and the diversity and longevity of its products, markets and customer positions, which in combination it describes as difficult to replicate. An unpackaged chip built on a 300mm wafer costs about 40% less than one built on a 200mm wafer; TI continued qualifying and ramping production at its newest 300mm fabs in Richardson and Sherman, Texas, and Lehi, Utah, supporting external foundry transfers and internal transfers from its legacy 150mm facilities, and expects to maintain sufficient internal capacity to meet the majority of its production needs, offering customers geopolitically dependable capacity. TI sells to over 100,000 customers, with about half of revenue derived from customers outside its largest 50; more than 80% of revenue was direct in 2025, including TI.com. End markets as a percentage of 2025 revenue: industrial 33%, automotive 33%, personal electronics 21%, data centre 9%, communications equipment 3%, and calculators about 1%. About 60% of revenue comes from customers headquartered outside the United States; revenue from end customers headquartered in China represented about 20% of revenue in 2025, while revenue from products shipped into China represented about 50%. The analog and embedded processing markets remain highly fragmented, with significant global competition from dozens of large and small companies including emerging companies, particularly in Asia. The company's stated objective is the growth of free cash flow per share over the long term. — FY2025 · publ. 2026-02-06 · source ↗
- ReportedThe measure is Analog operating margin, which was 38.6% in 2025 — the number that would fall first if the catalogue stopped commanding a premium.Texas Instruments Incorporated, Form 10-K FY2025 — consolidated statements of income and segment results. Revenue $17,682M, up $2.04bn or 13.0%; gross profit $10,081M; operating profit $6,023M; other income net $230M; interest and debt expense $543M; income before income taxes $5,710M; provision for income taxes $709M at an effective rate of 12.4% (12.0% in 2024); net income $5,001M against $4,799M in 2024 and $6,510M in 2023. Basic EPS $5.47 and diluted EPS $5.45, against $5.20 and $7.07 in the two prior years, on 913 million diluted shares. By segment, Analog revenue $14,006M (2024 $12,161M, +15%) with operating profit $5,412M (2024 $4,608M, +17%) at 38.6% of revenue (37.9%); Embedded Processing $2,700M; Other the remainder. Revenue peaked at $20,028M in 2022 with operating profit of $10,140M, and troughed at $15,641M in 2024 with operating profit of $5,465M. — FY2025 · publ. 2026-02-06 · source ↗