Texas Instruments tumbles after CFO affirms loss of sales momentum after a rush of buying to beat tariffs

Texas Instruments is tumbling after its chief financial officer reiterated that strength in the chipmaker’s sales through April included a rush to beat potential tariffs, and that its momentum has slowed since then.

At Citi’s 2025 Global TMT Conference on Thursday, CFO Rafael Lizardi said:

“The aging orders inside the quarter, which are a good leading indicator, those were pretty strong January through April. And April in particular were really strong and we think some of that was due to the Liberation Day and some of the dynamics that happened there. But then things did slow down after April, or at least didn’t grow as they normally would have month-on-month, and month-on-month again, some of that was the Liberation Day potential pull-ins, and we talked about that at some length at our July earnings release call.”

The comments are adding to investors’ fears that Texas Instruments’ nascent turnaround may be somewhat of a mirage.

CEO Haviv Ilan wasn’t especially definitive in that July conference call on how much demand may have been pulled forward because of customer fears they’d soon face much higher costs due to tariffs:

“We don’t know. I just want to repeat that point. We just have to make assumptions. Customers don’t tell us why they order. We just go through the data and try to decipher it, right? So we just can’t rule out the possibility. And we say there likely could have been some. When you see such a strong behavior in Q2 versus Q1, you have to attribute some of it to the tariff environment.”

Back in June, we flagged that Texas Instruments was one of a handful of companies seemingly very susceptible to having seen a somewhat one-off boost to orders because of changing consumer demand in light of the changing rules of cross-border commerce.

In fact, the main complaint about Texas Instruments’ latest quarterly report from the sell-side community was simply that the vibes were off. Three separate analysts on the conference call noted that, despite financials that were better than expected and relatively solid guidance, Ilan’s “tone” was not too upbeat.

And, speaking of the tone being off...

When asked about inventory management and avoiding any write-offs, Lizardi was willing to countenance the idea that Texas Instruments’ sales in its next fiscal year may be on the softer side of what the chipmaker has penciled in.

“We have a framework for next year’s revenue, $20 billion to $26 billion; we put that out there. If we’re at the lower end of that framework for next year, and you’ll hear more about that in October and January... then we’ll have to adjust our wafer starts down to manage our inventory better,” he said during today’s Q&A.

This is a qualified statement, not a formal tweak to the company’s outlook, but certainly not a particularly encouraging tone to be striking. The Street is already seemingly bracing for a cut to that guidance, as 2026 revenue forecasts currently stand at $19.5 billion, per Bloomberg.