Power Integrations, Inc. (POWI)

How it makes money

Revenue is almost entirely the sale of chips, priced per unit, with no subscription or service layer. About 69% of 2025 net product revenue went through distributors that resell to OEMs and merchant power-supply makers, and about 31% was direct. There are no long-term purchase commitments: distributors face no minimum volumes and can stop carrying the products at any time, so revenue depends on repeat design wins — a Power Integrations part specified into a customer's power supply generates orders for as long as that end product is built. Margins reflect this: GAAP gross margin was 54.5% in 2025.

Revenue by segment

The advantage is technical rather than commercial: high-voltage analog design is hard to copy, and Power Integrations has built proprietary process technology — including its PowiGaN gallium-nitride devices, whose revenue grew more than 40% in 2025 — behind a patent portfolio of 281 U.S. and 329 foreign patents as of December 31, 2025. Once a part is designed into a power supply it is rarely swapped mid-life, which gives some stickiness. But the products are components sold into price-competitive consumer and computing supplies, the company has no long-term customer contracts, and larger power-semiconductor rivals compete in the same sockets — so the advantage is real but not wide.

Demand follows the build rates of the end products the chips go into, so it tracks consumer electronics and appliance sales, construction and industrial capital spending, and the semiconductor inventory cycle at distributors — who take about 69% of product revenue and can slow orders sharply while they work down stock. The company itself names the cyclical nature of the power-supply industry as a driver of volatile results. Some demand is more stable than the average: smart meters, medical equipment and grid-related gate drivers are driven by regulation and utility programmes rather than the consumer mood, and the shift from silicon to gallium nitride and from combustion to electric vehicles is a secular tailwind that runs through the cycle. But the swing factor is cyclical, as 2025's pattern showed — a strong second quarter followed by a fourth quarter down 13% sequentially.

Key risks

• Results swing hard and are difficult to forecast — The company lists volatility of operating results among its principal risks, pointing to the cyclical nature of the power-supply industry and cyclical patterns that differ across the end markets its chips serve. Quarterly revenue can move sharply in either direction with little warning.
• A downturn in one major end market hits the whole company — Because revenue is concentrated in four end markets, the filing warns that a decline in demand in any of them would hurt results. With consumer and industrial together the large majority of 2025 revenue, weakness in appliances or in industrial capital spending is not offset elsewhere.
• No long-term customer contracts — The filing states that the company lacks long-term commitments from customers, that distributors are not subject to minimum purchase requirements, and that sales representatives and distributors can discontinue marketing the products at any time. Backlog therefore offers limited visibility.
• Dependence on third-party wafer suppliers — The company discloses that it depends on third-party suppliers for the wafers used in its products and that its business may suffer if they fail to provide sufficient quantities. It does not control the capacity it relies on.
• Trade policy, tariffs and international exposure — Risk factors cover changes in global trade policy and tariffs, and the broader risks of international sales — the customer base for power supplies is heavily concentrated in Asia, so trade measures and currency or regulatory shifts reach revenue directly.
• New products and uncertain technology adoption — The filing flags the difficulty of developing and introducing new products on time, and uncertainty about the pace at which emerging technologies — including artificial-intelligence applications — are adopted. Growth depends on design wins that may not arrive as planned.
• Product quality and defects — Because the chips sit in the high-voltage stage of a power supply, the company identifies product defects and quality problems as a risk: a failure in the field can mean recalls, liability and lost customer relationships.

Top customers account for 81% of revenue

Concentration is high and rising: the top ten customers, including distributors that resell to OEMs and merchant power-supply makers, accounted for approximately 81% of net revenue in 2025, against 79% in 2024 and 80% in 2023. Two customers, both distributors, each accounted for more than 10% of revenue in 2025, as in 2024; the filing does not name them or give their individual shares. Note that a distributor is a channel, not the final buyer, so the underlying OEM base is broader than the figure suggests — but the ordering decisions, and the credit risk, sit with a handful of counterparties.