Compare moats
Up to three covered companies, band by band. Every call is a curated editorial judgment, never a disclosed figure — and every band carries its cited basis.
| AMD | FormFactor | Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | narrow AMD's FY2025 10-K documents real but bounded advantages: approximately 7,200 U.S. patents and roughly 18,900 patent matters worldwide, an outright claim that 'We are the market share leader in semi-custom game console products,' and gross margin of 50% on revenue up 34% to $34.6 billion. The same filing sets the ceiling: 'Some of our competitors may possess stronger market positions, larger customer bases, more design wins, and greater financial, sales, marketing, and distribution resources than us'; Nvidia is named 'the discrete GPU market share leader'; and AMD relies on TSMC 'for the production of all wafers for microprocessor and GPU products at 7 nanometer (nm) or smaller nodes.' Advantages that are genuine, contested, and dependent on a shared foundry are narrow, not wide. | narrow An independent tracker places FormFactor in a small group of suppliers, but the same tracker expects it to lose the top spot. TrendForce's June 2026 report on the probe card market (Part 2, 2026-06-26, https://www.trendforce.com/research/download/RP260626XO3) says 'FormFactor, Technoprobe, and MJC dominate, while Taiwan's CHPT, MPI, and WinWay gain share riding the AI wave'. It describes the economics as 'Consumable probe tips create a high-margin hardware subscription model; repair and replacement fees are key profit drivers'. Its outlook reads: 'Total revenue is forecast to surge sharply in 2026, with Technoprobe poised to overtake FormFactor as the top global supplier.' FormFactor's own margins over the last three fiscal years do not show exceptional returns. TradingPilot's fundamentals record from the FY2025 10-K (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1039399/000103939926000009/0001039399-26-000009-index.htm) shows gross profit of $258.6M on $663.1M of revenue in FY2023, $307.9M on $763.6M in FY2024 and $308.9M on $785.0M in FY2025. Gross margin has since risen to 50.7% (GAAP) in Q2 2026. A defended place among three dominant suppliers, but one whose rank is slipping to a rival, is a narrow moat rather than a wide one. | none PSMC lost money through the last mature-node downturn and then sold its newest fab. Its 2025 annual report (printed 2026-02-24) records revenue of NT$46.7 billion and 'a net loss after tax of NT$7.8 billion for the year'. Gross profit swung from NT$525,425 thousand in 2024 to a loss of NT$1,536,997 thousand in 2025, 'primarily attributable to an increase in gross loss from operations at the Tongluo Fab'. The report says 'good performance was difficult both in pricing and capacity utilization rates for mature-node wafer foundry services'. PSMC then agreed to sell the Tongluo site and facilities, excluding manufacturing equipment, to Micron. The Register (2026-01-20) reports total cash consideration of US$1.8 billion, against PSMC's earlier statement that it had invested more than NT$300 billion (US$9.5 billion) in the facility. Profits have since recovered: Q2 2026 net income was NT$3,291 million, against a NT$3,334 million loss a year earlier, per the company's September 2026 presentation. The cited sources tie that recovery to memory and wafer price increases, not to a lasting edge. |
| Moat type | intangibles ip The FY2025 10-K locates the durable asset in design IP rather than manufacturing: 'We rely on contracts and intellectual property rights to protect our products and technologies from unauthorized third-party copying and use,' with approximately 7,200 U.S. patents and about 18,900 patent matters worldwide spanning x86 EPYC/Ryzen CPUs, CDNA/RDNA graphics and the Versal/Zynq adaptive-SoC families, and it credits customer wins to 'our broad IP portfolio and leadership in design, integration and advanced packaging.' It is explicitly not cost_scale: AMD is fabless and 'utilize[s] Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) for the production of wafers' — the same leading-edge foundry its merchant competitors use, so no manufacturing-scale advantage accrues to it. | intangibles ip The tracker locates the advantage in proprietary probe technology. TrendForce's Part 1 report (2026-06-23, https://www.trendforce.com/research/download/RP260623JC3) says 'MEMS has become the mainstream probe process; proprietary tip alloy formulas are now the key differentiator for current capacity and longevity'. FormFactor's own example is SmartMatrix, its full-wafer contactor for high-bandwidth memory (HBM). On the Q1 2026 call (https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/04/29/formfactor-form-q1-2026-earnings-transcript/), management called it 'FormFactor's differentiated Smart Matrix full wafer contactor technology'. The consumable-tip model TrendForce describes is a recurring-revenue feature of the product rather than a separate lock-in, so intangibles/IP is the better-supported moat source. | none The cited evidence supports none of the candidate moat sources. Cost: the annual report says its 12-inch aluminum-interconnect dies cost 30% less than 8-inch dies at the same node, yet the company still posted a 2025 gross loss. Switching costs: the report names 'the price and capacity competition of china wafer foundries' as an unfavorable factor. TrendForce (2026-05-07) says customers in HV processes and CIS applications are 'increasingly turning to Chinese foundries for more stable pricing and capacity availability'. Niche memory: PSMC's September 2026 presentation claims shares of 71% in DRAM (≤1Gb) and 74% in pseudo SRAM (≤256Mb), citing 'Company data, Omdia, TrendForce'. No independent source confirming those shares was found. |
| Leadership | fast follower The FY2025 10-K itself places AMD behind the pace-setter in its two most important markets: 'Our principal competitor in the supply of discrete graphics is Nvidia, who is the discrete GPU market share leader,' and the risk factors state Nvidia 'leverages its market position in data center GPU, financial resources, and proprietary software ecosystem to promote its systems and influences customers who do business with us.' AMD is nonetheless executing 'an annual cadence of leadership for AMD Instinct solutions' and has won gigawatt-scale commitments (OpenAI, 6 GW) — following fast and closely, not setting the pace. | co leader TrendForce's Part 2 report (2026-06-26) names 'FormFactor, Technoprobe, and MJC' as the dominant suppliers and says 'Total revenue is forecast to surge sharply in 2026, with Technoprobe poised to overtake FormFactor as the top global supplier', which implies FormFactor holds the top rank now and that TrendForce expects it to lose that rank. In logic, the rival reports a large position. Technoprobe's May 2026 company presentation (https://www.technoprobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Technoprobe-Company-Presentation-May-2026.pdf, citing Yole's Q3 2024 test consumables monitor) gives Technoprobe 'Market Share: 34%' of the $1.6 billion 2024 logic probe card market and 60% of the $937 million MEMS logic probe card market. TrendForce gives no percentage for FormFactor. A shared front rank, with the overall lead forecast to pass to Technoprobe, is co-leadership. | at parity PSMC sits in a cluster of similar-sized foundries rather than leading any. TrendForce ranks it tenth in 1Q26 (foundry-only revenue of $386 million, a 0.8% share) and tenth in 2Q26 ($432 million). It is just behind Nexchip ($447 million), VIS ($451 million) and Tower ($460 million). Its own annual report puts it 'among the top ten wafer foundry companies worldwide, with a market share of approximately 1%'. |
| Pricing power | moderate FY2025 gross margin was 50%, up from 49% in 2024 per the 10-K — healthy and improving — but the same filing attributes average-selling-price pressure to competitors: Intel 'uses its microprocessor market position to price its products aggressively and target our customers and channel partners with special incentives. These aggressive activities have reduced and may reduce our unit sales and average selling prices for many of our products'. Pricing power is real but contested. | moderate Gross margin sat near 39-40% for three years, per TradingPilot's fundamentals record from the FY2025 10-K ($258.6M on $663.1M, $307.9M on $763.6M and $308.9M on $785.0M for FY2023-FY2025). It then jumped. The Q2 2026 results release (https://seekingalpha.com/pr/20600102, 2026-07-29) reports GAAP gross margin of 50.7%, against 38.4% in Q1 2026 and 37.3% in Q2 2025, and guides Q3 2026 to 52.0% plus or minus 1.5%. Management attributes the gain to cost and yield rather than price. On the Q1 2026 call it said 'pricing really is not a driver of the gross margin improvement. It's COGS reduction and our operations team continuing to improve yields and cycle times'. TrendForce describes consumable probe tips as 'a high-margin hardware subscription model'. Margins are higher now, but FormFactor itself does not credit price for the improvement. | weak PSMC is raising prices now, but on a memory shortage after a year of gross losses. The 2025 annual report shows a gross loss of NT$1,536,997 thousand. TrendForce (2026-04-22, citing Liberty Times) reports that PSMC 'sharply raised DRAM foundry pricing in March', raised NAND wafer start prices in April, and lifted 8-inch prices 'by an average of around 10% month over month since March'. President Martin Chu said logic price increases 'are likely to remain far more moderate than the sharp hikes seen in memory'. He tied the memory upswing to 'a structural supply deficit through the second half of 2026', which is a cyclical driver. |
| Summary | AMD's edge is architectural design IP executed on someone else's fabs. The FY2025 10-K describes a full-stack portfolio — EPYC server CPUs, Instinct AI accelerators, Ryzen client parts where 'AMD was the first company to integrate a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) on the same SoC as an x86 CPU for AI PCs,' Radeon graphics, Pensando networking and Versal adaptive SoCs — backed by roughly 18,900 patent matters worldwide, and it discloses gigawatt-scale customer commitments (an October 2025 agreement with OpenAI 'to deploy 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs,' first gigawatt on Instinct MI450). The same filing bounds that moat: Nvidia is 'the discrete GPU market share leader' and 'leverages its market position in data center GPU, financial resources, and proprietary software ecosystem'; Intel 'uses its microprocessor market position to price its products aggressively'; Arm architectures and customers who 'internally develop products to support similar AI workloads' are named as encroaching; and every wafer at 7 nm or below comes from TSMC. Revenue grew 34% in FY2025 with Data Center up 32%, but the filing's own competitive framing places AMD in the challenger seat rather than the entrenched one. | FormFactor makes probe cards, the consumable interfaces used to test chips at wafer level, for foundry and logic customers and for DRAM including HBM. It also has a Systems business, whose co-packaged-optics probing products management said on the Q1 2026 call were ramping. TrendForce's June 2026 probe card reports name FormFactor, Technoprobe and MJC as the dominant suppliers. They say MEMS probes are now mainstream, with 'proprietary tip alloy formulas' the key differentiator. They describe consumable probe tips as 'a high-margin hardware subscription model', with order visibility stretching 'from one quarter to up to two years'. FormFactor is benefiting: Q2 2026 revenue was $258.2 million, up 31.9% year over year, and GAAP gross margin was 50.7% against 37.3% a year earlier. On the Q1 2026 call, management said a second HBM customer was increasing adoption of SmartMatrix, and that networking probe cards had made a leader in high-performance compute a 10% customer. The limits are competitive. TrendForce forecasts that Technoprobe will overtake FormFactor as the top global supplier in 2026, and says Taiwanese suppliers CHPT, MPI and WinWay are gaining share. Technoprobe's May 2026 presentation, citing Yole, puts its own share at 34% of the 2024 logic probe card market and 60% of MEMS logic probe cards. | PSMC is a Taiwanese foundry with two 8-inch and three 12-inch fabs in Hsinchu and Zhunan. It has three businesses: memory foundry (niche DRAM, SLC NAND and NOR flash), specialty logic (PMICs, power discretes, high-voltage display drivers, CMOS image sensors) and a newer '3D AI foundry' (wafer-on-wafer stacking, interposers, silicon capacitors and HBM post-wafer finishing). In Q2 2026, memory was 52% of revenue, logic 42.6% and 3D AI 5.4%, per its September 2026 presentation. 2025 was a loss year. Revenue rose 4% to NT$46.7 billion, but the company lost NT$7.8 billion as the new Tongluo fab failed to reach scale. 2026 has turned on prices. Q2 2026 revenue was NT$17,291 million, up 53% YoY, with foundry utilization of 87% against 75% a year earlier. TrendForce ranks PSMC tenth in 2Q26 with $432 million, noting that 'overall shipments increased only modestly' and that price increases drove the growth. The strategy is changing. PSMC sold the Tongluo site to Micron, and will provide HBM post-wafer finishing for Micron, with mass production expected in Q4 2027 (TrendForce, 2026-04-22). Its silicon capacitors are expected in Intel's EMIB packaging, according to PSMC. The verdict is no moat. PSMC is a mature-node foundry whose 2026 profits reflect a memory-price cycle after a loss-making 2025, and Chinese foundries compete with it on price. |
| Chain position | A fabless merchant-silicon designer sitting one layer above the foundries: the FY2025 10-K states AMD relies on TSMC 'for the production of all wafers for microprocessor and GPU products at 7 nanometer (nm) or smaller nodes' and primarily on GLOBALFOUNDRIES above 7 nm, with packaging and test performed by Asia-Pacific ATMP partners — so its cost, supply and cadence are inherited from partners it does not control. | A wafer-test consumables supplier between chipmakers and tester makers. Its customers include HBM and DRAM makers and foundry/logic chip designers. TrendForce's Part 1 report (2026-06-23) says 'Advantest and Teradyne have taken stakes in Technoprobe, FormFactor, and MJC, signaling accelerated vertical integration ahead.' | Upstream foundry for fabless memory and specialty-logic designers. Fabless customers were 90% of Q2 2026 sales. It also provides silicon capacitors, interposers and HBM post-wafer finishing to AI packaging supply chains. |
| Products (share / barrier) |
|
|
|
| Long-horizon vote | +0.06 at weight 0.20 · swarm bullish Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.13 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | -0.06 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |